M^'^ 


THE    CASE    OF 
OSCAR  SLATER 

A.  CONAN  DOYLE 


THE    CASE     OF 

OSCAR  SLATER 


BY 
ARTHUR  CONAN  DOYLE 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  LOST  WORLD,"  "  SHER  LOCK  HOLMES," 
"THE  WHITE  COMPANY,-   ETC. 


HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 

NEW  YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


'.  .'  Copyright,  1912 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 


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THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR 
SLATER 


IT  is  impossible  to  read  and  weigh  the  facts 
in  connection  with  the  conviction  of  Oscar 
Slater  in  May,  1909,  at  the  High  Court  in 
Edinburgh,  without  feeling  deeply  dissatisfied 
with  the  proceedings,  and  morally  certain  that 
justice   was   not   done.     Under   the   circum- 
stances of  Scotch  law  I  am  not  clear  how  far 
any  remedy  exists,  but  it  will,  in  my  opinion, 
be  a  serious  scandal  if  the  man  be  allowed  upon 
such  evidence  to  spend  his  life  in  a  convict 
prison.    The  verdict  which  led  to  his  con- 
demnation to  death,  was  given  by  a  jury  of 
fifteen,  who  voted;  Nine  for  "Guilty,"  five 
for  "  Non-proven,"  and  one  for  "  Not  Guilty." 
Under  English  law,  this  division  of  opinion 
would  naturally  have  given  cause  for  a  new 
trial.    In  Scotland  the  man  was  condemned 
to  death,  he  was  only  reprieved  two  days  be- 
fore his  execution,  and  he  is  now  working 


477G4? 


THE-  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

out  a  life  sentence  in  Peterhead  convict  es- 
tablishment. How  far  the  verdict  was  a  just 
one,  the  reader  may  judge  for  himself  when 
he  has  perused  a  connected  story  of  the  case. 
There  lived  in  Glasgow  in  the  year  1908,  an 
old  maiden  lady  named  Miss  Marion  Gilchrist. 
She  had  lived  for  thirty  years  in  the  one  flat, 
which  was  on  the  first  floor  in  15,  Queen's 
Terrace.  The  flat  above  hers  was  vacant,  and 
the  only  immediate  neighbours  were  a  family 
named  Adams,  living  on  the  ground  floor  be- 
low, their  house  having  a  separate  door  which 
was  close  alongside  the  flat  entrance.  The 
old  lady  had  one  servant,  named  Helen 
Lambie,  who  was  a  girl  twenty-one  years  of 
age.  This  girl  had  been  with  Miss  Gilchrist 
for  three  or  four  years.  By  all  accounts  Miss 
Gilchrist  was  a  most  estimable  person,  leading 
a  quiet  and  uneventful  life.  She  was  com- 
fortably off,  and  she  had  one  singular  charac- 
teristic for  a  lady  of  her  age  and  surroundings, 
in  that  she  had  made  a  collection  of  jewelry 
of  considerable  value.  These  jewels,  which 
took  the  form  of  brooches,  rings,  pendants, 
etc.,  were  bought  at  different  times,  extending 

8 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

over  a  considerable  number  of  years,  from  a 
reputable  jeweller.  I  lay  stress  upon  the  fact, 
as  some  wild  rumour  was  circulated  at  the  time 
that  the  old  lady  might  herself  be  a  criminal 
receiver.  Such  an  idea  could  not  be  enter- 
tained. She  seldom  wore  her  jewelry  save  in 
single  pieces,  and  as  her  life  was  a  retired  one, 
it  is  difficult  to  see  how  anyone  outside  a  very 
small  circle  could  have  known  of  her  hoard. 
The  value  of  this  treasure  was  about  three 
thousand  pounds.  It  was  a  fearful  joy  which 
she  snatched  from  its  possession,  for  she  more 
than  once  expressed  apprehension  that  she 
might  be  attacked  and  robbed.  Her  fears  had 
the  practical  result  that  she  attached  two  pat- 
ent locks  to  her  front  door,  and  that  she  ar- 
ranged with  the  Adams  family  underneath  that 
in  case  of  alarm  she  would  signal  to  them  by 
knocking  upon  the  floor. 

It  was  the  household  practice  that  Lambie, 
the  maid,  should  go  out  and  get  an  evening 
paper  for  her  mistress  about  seven  o'clock  each 
day.  After  bringing  the  paper  she  then 
usually  went  out  again  upon  the  necessary 
shopping.     This  routine  was  followed  upon 

9 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

the  night  of  December  21st.  She  left  her 
mistress  seated  by  the  fire  in  the  dining-room 
reading  a  magazine.  Lambie  took  the  keys 
with  her,  shut  the  flat  door,  closed  the  hall 
door  downstairs,  and  was  gone  about  ten  min- 
utes upon  her  errand.  It  is  the  events  of  those 
ten  minutes  which  form  the  tragedy  and  the 
mystery  which  were  so  soon  to  engage  the 
attention  of  the  public. 

According  to  the  girl's  evidence,  it  was  a 
minute  or  two  before  seven  when  she  went 
out.  At  about  seven,  Mr.  Arthur  Adams  and 
his  two  sisters  were  in  their  dining-room  im- 
mediately below  the  room  in  which  the  old 
lady  had  been  left.  Suddenly  they  heard  "  a 
noise  from  above,  then  a  very  heavy  fall,  and 
then  three  sharp  knocks."  They  were 
alarmed  at  the  sound,  and  the  young  man 
at  once  set  off  to  see  if  all  was  right.  He 
ran  out  of  his  hall  door,  through  the  hall 
door  of  the  flats,  which  was  open,  and  so 
up  to  the  first  floor,  where  he  found  Miss 
Gilchrist's  door  shut.  He  rang  three  times 
without  an  answer.  From  within,  however, 
he  heard  a  sound  which  he  compared  to  the 
10 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

breaking  of  sticks.     He  imagined  therefore 
that  the  servant   girl  was  within,   and  that 
she   was   engaged   in  her  household   duties. 
After  waiting  for  a  minute  or  two,  he  seems 
to  have  convinced  himself  that  all  was  right. 
He  therefore  descended  again  and  returned 
to  his  sisters,  who  persuaded  him  to  go  up 
once  more  to  the  flat.  This  he  did  and  rang  for 
the  fourth  time.   As  he  was  standing  with  his 
hand  upon  the  bell,  straining  his  ears  and  hear- 
ing nothing,  someone  approached  up  the  stairs 
from  below.    It  was  the  young  servant-maid, 
Helen  Lambie,  returning  from  her  errand. 
The  two  held  council  for  a  moment.    Young 
Adams  described  the  noise  which  had  been 
heard.    Lambie  said  that  the  pulleys  of  the 
clothes-lines  in  the  kitchen  must  have  given 
way.     It  was  a  singular  explanation,  since  the 
kitchen  was  not  above  the  dining-room  of  the 
Adams,  and  one  would  not  expect  any  great 
noise  from  the  fall  of  a  cord  which  suspended 
sheets  or  towels.    However,   it  was  a  mo- 
ment of  agitation,  and  the  girl  may  have  said 
the   first   explanation  which   came   into  her 
head.     She    then    put    her    keys    into    the 

II 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

two  safety  locks  and  opened  the  door. 
At  this  point  there  is  a  curious  little  dis- 
crepancy of  evidence.  Lambie  is  prepared  to 
swear  that  she  remained  upon  the  mat  beside 
young  Adams.  Adams  is  equally  positive  that 
she  walked  several  paces  down  the  hall.  This 
inside  hall  was  lit  by  a  gas,  which  turned  half 
up,  and  shining  through  a  coloured  shade, 
gave  a  sufficient,  but  not  a  brilliant  light. 
Says  Adams :  "  I  stood  at  the  door  on  the 
threshold,  half  in  and  half  out,  and  just  when 
the  girl  had  got  past  the  clock  to  go  into 
the  kitchen,  a  well-dressed  man  appeared.  I 
did  not  suspect  him,  and  she  said  nothing; 
and  he  came  up  to  me  quite  pleasantly.  I  did 
not  suspect  an3^hing  wrong  for  the  minute. 
I  thought  the  man  was  going  to  speak  to  me, 
till  he  got  past  me,  and  then  I  suspected 
something  wrong,  and  by  that  time  the  girl 
ran  into  the  kitchen  and  put  the  gas  up  and 
said  it  was  all  right,  meaning  her  pulleys. 
I  said:  'Where  is  your  mistress?*  and  she 
went  into  the  dining-room.  She  said :  *  Oh ! 
come  here ! '  I  just  went  in  and  saw  this 
horrible  spectacle." 

12 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

The  spectacle  in  question  was  the  poor  old 
lady  lying  upon  the  floor  close  by  the  chair 
in  which  the  servant  had  last  seen  her.  Her 
feet  were  towards  the  door,  her  head  towards 
the  fireplace.  She  lay  upon  a  hearth-rug,  but 
a  skin  rug  had  been  thrown  across  her  head. 
Her  injuries  were  frightful,  nearly  every  bone 
of  her  face  and  skull  being  smashed.  In  spite 
of  her  dreadful  wounds  she  lingered  for  a 
few  minutes,  but  died  without  showing  any 
sign  of  consciousness. 

The  murderer  when  he  had  first  appeared 
had  emerged  from  one  of  the  two  bedrooms 
at  the  back  of  the  hall,  the  larger,  or  spare 
bedroom,  not  the  old  lady's  room.  On  pass- 
ing Adams  upon  the  doormat,  which  he  had 
done  with  the  utmost  coolness,  he  had  at  once 
rushed  down  the  stair.  It  was  a  dark  and 
drizzly  evening,  and  it  seems  that  he  made 
his  way  along  one  or  two  quiet  streets  until 
he  was  lost  in  the  more  crowded  thorough- 
fares. He  had  left  no  weapon  nor  posses- 
sion of  any  sort  in  the  old  lady's  flat,  save  a 
box  of  matches  with  which  he  had  lit  the  gas 
in  the  bedroom  from  which  he  had  come.    In 

13 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

this  bedroom  a  number  of  articles  of  value, 
including  a  watch,  lay  upon  the  dressing-table, 
but  none  of  them  had  been  touched.  A  box 
containing  papers  had  been  forced  open,  and 
these  papers  were  found  scattered  upon  the 
floor.  If  he  were  really  in  search  of  the 
jewels,  he  was  badly  informed,  for  these  were 
kept  among  the  dresses  in  the  old  lady's  ward- 
robe. Later,  a  single  crescent  diamond  brooch, 
an  article  worth  perhaps  forty  or  fifty  pounds, 
was  found  to  be  missing.  Nothing  else  was 
taken  from  the  flat.  It  is  remarkable  that 
though  the  furniture  round  where  the  body 
lay  was  spattered  with  blood,  and  one  would 
have  imagined  that  the  murderer's  hands  must 
have  been  stained,  no  mark  was  seen  upon  the 
half-consumed  match  with  which  he  had  lit 
the  gas,  nor  upon  the  match  box,  the  box  con- 
taining papers,  nor  any  other  thing  which  he 
may  have  touched  in  the  bedroom. 

We  come  now  to  the  all-important  question 
of  the  description  of  the  man  seen  at  such 
close  quarters  by  Adams  and  Lambie.  Adams 
was  short-sighted  and  had  not  his  spectacle3 
with  him.    His  evidence  at  the  trial  ran  thus: 

14 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

"  He  was  a  man  a  little  taller  and  a  little 
broader  than  I  am,  not  a  well-built  man  but 
well  featured  and  clean-shaven,  and  I  cannot 
exactly  swear  to  his  moustache,  but  if  he  had 
any  it  was  very  little.  He  was  rather  a  com- 
mercial traveller  t5^e,  or  perhaps  a  clerk,  and 
I  did  not  know  but  what  he  might  be  one 
of  her  friends.  He  had  on  dark  trousers  and 
a  light  overcoat.  I  could  not  say  if  it  were 
fawn  or  grey.  I  do  not  recollect  what  sort  of 
hat  he  had.  He  seemed  gentlemanly  and  well- 
dressed.  He  had  nothing  in  his  hand  so  far 
as  I  could  tell.  I  did  not  notice  anything 
about  his  way  of  walking." 

Helen  Lambie,  the  other  spectator,  could 
give  no  information  about  the  face  (which 
rather  bears  out  Adams'  view  as  to  her  posi- 
tion), and  could  only  say  that  he  wore  a 
round  cloth  hat,  a  three-quarter  length  over- 
coat of  a  grey  colour,  and  that  he  had  some 
peculiarity  in  his  walk.  As  the  distance  trav- 
ersed by  the  murderer  within  sight  of  Lambie 
could  be  crossed  in  four  steps,  and  as  these 
steps  were  taken  under  circumstances  of  pe- 
culiar agitation,  it  is  difficult  to  think  that 
15 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

any  importance  could  be  attached  to  this  last 
item  in  the  description. 

It  is  impossible  to  avoid  some  comment 
upon  the  actions  of  Helen  Lambie  during  the 
incidents  just  narrated,  which  can  only  be 
explained  by  supposing  that  from  the  time  she 
saw  Adams  waiting  outside  her  door,  her 
whole  reasoning  faculty  had  deserted  her. 
First,  she  explained  the  great  noise  heard  be- 
low: "The  ceiling  was  like  to  crack,"  said 
Adams,  by  the  fall  of  a  clothes-line  and  its 
pulleys  of  attachment,  which  could  not  pos- 
sibly, one  would  imagine,  have  produced  any 
such  effect.  She  then  declares  that  she  re- 
mained upon  the  mat,  while  Adams  is  con- 
vinced that  she  went  right  down  the  hall.  On 
the  appearance  of  the  stranger  she  did  not 
gasp  out:  "  Who  are  you?  "  or  any  other  sign 
of  amazement,  but  allowed  Adams  to  suppose 
by  her  silence  that  the  man  might  be  some- 
one who  had  a  right  to  be  there.  Finally,  in- 
stead of  rushing  at  once  to  see  if  her  mistress 
was  safe,  she  went  into  the  kitchen,  still  ap- 
parently under  the  obsession  of  the  pulleys. 
She  informed  Adams  that  they  were  all  right, 

i6 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

as  if  it  mattered  to  any  human  being;  thence 
she  went  into  the  spare  bedroom,  where  she 
must  have  seen  that  robbery  had  been  com- 
mitted, since  an  open  box  lay  in  the  middle  of 
the  floor.  She  gave  no  alarm  however,  and 
it  was  only  when  Adams  called  out :  "  Where 
is  your  mistress?  "  that  she  finally  went  into 
the  room  of  the  murder.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  this  seems  strange  conduct,  and  only  ex- 
plicable, if  it  can  be  said  to  be  explicable,  by 
great  want  of  intelligence  and  grasp  of  the  sit- 
uation. 

On  Tuesday,  December  22nd,  the  morning 
after  the  murder,  the  Glasgow  police  circu- 
lated a  description  of  the  murderer,  founded 
upon  the  joint  impressions  of  Adams  and  of 
Lambie.     It  ran  thus: 

"  A  man  between  25  and  30  years  of  age, 
five  foot  eight  or  nine  inches  in  height,  slim 
build,  dark  hair,  clean-shaven,  dressed  in  light 
grey  overcoat  and  dark  cloth  cap." 

Four  days  later,  however,  upon  Christmas 
Day,  the  police  found  themselves  in  a  position 
to  give  a  more  detailed  description : 

"  The  man  wanted  is  about  28  or  30  years 
17 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

of  age,  tall  and  thin,  with  his  face  shaved 
clear  of  all  hair,  while  a  distinctive  feature  is 
that  his  nose  is  slightly  turned  to  one  side. 
The  witness  thinks  the  twist  is  to  the  right 
side.  He  wore  one  of  the  popular  tweed  hats 
known  as  Donegal  hats,  and  a  fawn  coloured 
overcoat  which  might  have  been  a  waterproof, 
also  dark  trousers  and  brown  boots." 

The  material  from  which  these  further  points 
were  gathered,  came  from  a  young  girl  of 
fifteen,  in  humble  life,  named  Mary  Barrow- 
man.  According  to  this  new  evidence,  the 
witness  was  passing  the  scene  of  the  murder 
shortly  after  seven  o'clock  upon  the  fatal 
night.  She  saw  a  man  run  hurriedly  down 
the  steps,  and  he  passed  her  under  a  lamp-post. 
The  incandescent  light  shone  clearly  upon 
him.  He  ran  on,  knocking  against  the  wit- 
ness in  his  haste,  and  disappeared  round  a  cor- 
ner. On  hearing  later  of  the  murder,  she  con- 
nected this  incident  with  it.  Her  general 
recollections  of  the  man  were  as  given  in  the 
description,  and  the  grey  coat  and  cloth  cap 
of  the  first  two  witnesses  were  given  up  in 
favour  of  the  fawn  coat  and  round  Donegal 
i8 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

hat  of  the  young  girl.  Since  she  had  seen  no 
peculiarity  in  his  walk,  and  they  had  seen  none 
in  his  nose,  there  is  really  nothing  the  same  in 
the  two  descriptions  save  the  "  clean-shaven," 
the  "  slim  build  "  and  the  approximate  age. 

It  was  on  the  evening  of  Christmas  Day 
that  the  police  came  at  last  upon  a  definite 
clue.  It  was  brought  to  their  notice  that  a 
German  Jew  of  the  assumed  name  of  Oscar 
Slater  had  been  endeavouring  to  dispose  of 
the  pawn  ticket  of  a  crescent  diamond  brooch 
of  about  the  same  value  as  the  missing  one. 
Also,  that  in  a  general  way,  he  bore  a  resem- 
blance to  the  published  description.  Still 
more  hopeful  did  this  clue  appear  when,  upon 
raiding  the  lodgings  in  which  this  man  and 
his  mistress  lived,  it  was  found  that  they  had 
left  Glasgow  that  very  night  by  the  nine 
o'clock  train,  with  tickets  (over  this  point 
there  was  some  clash  of  evidence)  either  for 
Liverpool  or  London.  Three  days  later,  the 
Glasgow  police  learned  that  the  couple  had 
actually  sailed  upon  December  26th  upon  the 
Lusitania  for  New  York  under  the  name  of 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Otto  Sando.     It  must  be  ad- 

19 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

mitted  that  in  all  these  proceedings  the  Glas- 
gow police  showed  considerable  deliberation. 
The  original  information  had  been  given  at 
the  Central  Police  Office  shortly  after  six 
o'clock,  and  a  detective  was  actually  making 
enquiries  at  Slater's  fiat  at  seven-thirty,  yet 
no  watch  was  kept  upon  his  movements,  and 
he  was  allowed  to  leave  between  eight  and 
nine,  untraced  and  unquestioned.  Even 
stranger  was  the  Liverpool  departure.  He 
was  known  to  have  got  away  in  the  south- 
bound train  upon  the  Friday  evening.  A 
great  liner  sails  from  Liverpool  upon  the  Sat- 
urday. One  would  have  imagined  that  early 
on  the  Saturday  morning  steps  would  have 
been  taken  to  block  his  method  of  escape. 
However,  as  a  fact,  it  was  not  done,  and  as 
it  proved  it  is  as  well  for  the  cause  of  justice, 
since  it  had  the  effect  that  two  judicial  proc- 
esses were  needed,  an  American  and  a  Scot- 
tish, which  enables  an  interesting  comparison 
to  be  made  between  the  evidence  of  the  princi- 
pal witnesses. 

Oscar  Slater  was  at  once  arrested  upon  ar- 
riving at  New  York,  and  his  seven  trunks  of 

20 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

baggage  were  impounded  and  sealed.  On  the 
face  of  it  there  was  a  good  case  against  him, 
for  he  had  undoubtedly  pawned  a  diamond 
brooch,  and  he  had  subsequently  fled  under  a 
false  name  for  America.  The  Glasgow  police 
had  reason  to  think  that  they  had  got  their 
man.  Two  officers,  accompanied  by  the  wit- 
nesses to  identity  —  Adams,  Lambie  and  Bar- 
rowman  —  set  off  at  once  to  carry  through  the 
extradition  proceedings  and  bring  the  suspect 
back  to  be  tried  for  his  offence.  In  the  New 
York  Court  they  first  set  eyes  upon  the  pris- 
oner, and  each  of  them,  in  terms  which  will 
be  afterwards  described,  expressed  the  opinion 
that  he  was  at  any  rate  exceedingly  like  the 
person  they  had  seen  in  Glasgow.  Their  ac- 
tual identification  of  him  was  vitiated  by  the 
fact  that  Adams  and  Barrowman  had  been 
shown  his  photographs  before  attending  the 
Court,  and  also  that  he  was  led  past  them,  an 
obvious  prisoner,  whilst  they  were  waiting  in 
the  corridor.  Still,  however  much  one  may 
discount  the  actual  identification,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  each  witness  saw  a  close  resem- 
blance between  the  man  before  them  and  the 

21 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

man  whom  they  had  seen  in  Glasgow.  So  far 
at  every  stage  the  case  against  the  accused 
was  becoming  more  menacing.  Any  doubt  as 
to  extradition  was  speedily  set  at  rest  by  the 
prisoner's  announcement  that  he  was  prepared, 
without  compulsion,  to  return  to  Scotland  and 
to  stand  his  trial.  One  may  well  refuse  to 
give  him  any  excessive  credit  for  this  sur- 
render, since  he  may  have  been  persuaded  that 
things  were  going  against  him,  but  still  the 
fact  remains  (and  it  was  never,  so  far  as  I  can 
trace,  mentioned  at  his  subsequent  trial),  that 
he  gave  himself  up  of  his  own  free  will  to 
justice.  On  February  21st  Oscar  Slater  was 
back  in  Glasgow  once  more,  and  on  May  3rd 
his  trial  took  place  at  the  High  Court  in  Edin- 
burgh. 

But  already  the  very  bottom  of  the  case 
had  dropped  out.  The  starting  link  of  what 
had  seemed  an  imposing  chain,  had  suddenly 
broken.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  origi- 
nal suspicion  of  Slater  was  founded  upon  the 
fact  that  he  had  pawned  a  crescent  diamond 
brooch.  The  ticket  was  found  upon  him,  and 
the  brooch  recovered.  It  was  not  the  one 
22 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

which  was  missing  from  the  room  of  the  mur- 
dered woman,  and  it  had  belonged  for  years 
to  Slater,  who  had  repeatedly  pawned  it  be- 
fore. This  was  shown  beyond  all  cavil  or  dis- 
pute. The  case  of  the  police  might  well  seem 
desperate  after  this,  since  if  Slater  were  in- 
deed guilty,  it  would  mean  that  by  pure 
chance  they  had  pursued  the  right  man.  The 
coincidence  involved  in  such  a  supposition 
would  seem  to  pass  the  limits  of  all  proba- 
bility. 

Apart  from  this  crushing  fact,  several  of  the 
other  points  of  the  prosecution  had  already 
shown  themselves  to  be  worthless.  It  had 
seemed  at  first  that  Slater's  departure  had  been 
sudden  and  unpremeditated  —  the  flight  of  a 
guilty  man.  It  was  quickly  proved  that  this 
was  not  so.  In  the  Bohemian  clubs  which  he 
frequented  —  he  was  by  profession  a  peddling 
jeweller  and  a  man  of  disreputable,  though  not 
criminal  habits  —  it  had  for  weeks  before  the 
date  of  the  crime  been  known  that  he  pur- 
ported to  go  to  some  business  associates  in 
America.  A  correspondence,  which  was  pro- 
duced, showed  the  arrangements  which  had 
33 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

been  made,  long  before  the  crime,  for  his  emi- 
gration, though  it  should  be  added  that  the 
actual  determination  of  the  date  and  taking  of 
the  ticket  were  subsequent  to  the  tragedy. 

This  hurrying-up  of  the  departure  certainly 
deserves  close  scrutiny.  According  to  the  evi- 
dence of  his  mistress  and  of  the  servant,  Slater 
had  received  two  letters  upon  the  morning  of 
December  21st.  Neither  of  these  were  pro- 
duced at  the  trial.  One  was  said  to  be  from 
a  Mr.  Rogers,  a  friend  of  Slater's  in  London, 
telling  him  that  Slater's  wife  was  bothering 
him  for  money.  The  second  was  said  to  be 
from  one  Devoto,  a  former  partner  of  Slater's 
asking  him  to  join  him  in  San  Francisco. 
Even  if  the  letters  had  been  destroyed,  one 
would  imagine  that  these  statements  as  to  the 
letters  could  be  disproved  or  corroborated  by 
either  the  Crown  or  the  defence.  They  are  of 
considerable  importance,  as  giving  the  alleged 
reasons  why  Slater  hurried  up  a  departure 
which  had  been  previously  announced  as  for 
January.  I  cannot  find,  however,  that  in  the 
actual  trial  anything  definite  was  ascertained 
upon  the  matter. 

24 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Another  point  had  already  been  scored 
against  the  prosecution  in  that  the  seven 
trunks  which  contained  the  whole  effects  of 
the  prisoner,  yielded  nothing  of  real  impor- 
tance. There  were  a  felt  hat  and  two  cloth 
ones,  but  none  which  correspond  with  the 
Donegal  of  the  original  description.  A  light- 
coloured  waterproof  coat  was  among  the  out- 
fit. If  the  weapon  with  which  the  deed  was 
done  was  carried  off  in  the  pocket  of  the  as- 
sassin's overcoat  —  and  it  is  difficult  to  say 
how  else  he  could  have  carried  it,  then  the 
pocket  must,  one  would  suppose,  be  crusted 
with  blood,  since  the  crime  was  a  most  san- 
guinary one.  No  such  marks  were  discovered, 
nor  were  the  police  fortunate  as  to  the  weapon. 
It  is  true  that  a  hammer  was  found  in  the 
trunk,  but  it  was  clearly  shown  to  have  been 
purchased  in  one  of  those  cheap  half-crown 
sets  of  tools  which  are  tied  upon  a  card,  was 
an  extremely  light  and  fragile  instrument,  and 
utterly  incapable  in  the  eyes  of  commonsense 
of  inflicting  those  terrific  injuries  which  had 
shattered  the  old  lady's  skull.  It  is  said  by 
the  prosecution  to  bear  some  marks  of  hav- 
25 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

ing  been  scraped  or  cleaned,  but  this  was  vig- 
orously denied  by  the  defence,  and  the  police 
do  not  appear  to  have  pushed  the  matter  to 
the  obvious  test  of  removing  the  metal  work, 
when  they  must,  had  this  been  indeed  the 
weapon,  have  certainly  found  some  soakage 
of  blood  into  the  wood  under  the  edges  of 
the  iron  cheeks  or  head.  But  a  glance  at  a 
facsimile  of  this  puny  weapon  would  convince 
an  impartial  person  that  any  task  beyond  fix- 
ing a  tin-tack,  or  cracking  a  small  bit  of  coal, 
would  be  above  its  strength.  It  may  fairly 
be  said  that  before  the  trial  had  begun,  the 
three  important  points  of  the  pawned  jewel, 
the  supposed  flight,  and  the  evidence  from 
clothing  and  weapon,  had  each  either  broken 
down  completely,  or  become  exceedingly  at- 
tenuated. 

Let  us  see  now  what  there  was  upon  the 
other  side.  The  evidence  for  the  prosecution 
really  resolved  itself  into  two  sets  of  wit- 
nesses for  identification.  The  first  set  were 
those  who  had  actually  seen  the  murderer,  and 
included  Adams,  Helen  Lambie,  and  the  girl 
Barrowman.  The  second  set  consisted  of 
26 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

twelve  people  who  had,  at  various  dates,  seen 
a  man  frequenting  the  street  in  which  Miss 
Gilchrist  lived,  and  loitering  in  a  suspicious 
manner  before  the  house.  All  of  these,  some 
with  confidence,  but  most  of  them  with  re- 
serve, were  prepared  to  identify  the  prisoner 
with  this  unknown  man.  What  the  police 
never  could  produce,  however,  was  the  es- 
sential thing,  and  that  was  the  least  connect- 
ing link  between  Slater  and  Miss  Gilchrist,  or 
any  explanation  how  a  foreigner  in  Glasgow 
could  even  know  of  the  existence,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  wealth,  of  a  retired  old  lady,  who 
had  few  acquaintances  and  seldom  left  her 
guarded  flat. 

It  is  notorious  that  nothing  is  more  tricky 
than  evidence  of  identification.  In  the  Beck 
case  there  were,  if  I  remember  right,  some 
ten  witnesses  who  had  seen  the  real  criminal 
under  normal  circumstances,  and  yet  they 
were  all  prepared  to  swear  to  the  wrong  man. 
In  the  case  of  Oscar  Slater,  the  first  three 
witnesses  saw  their  man  under  conditions  of 
excitement,  while  the  second  group  saw  the 
loiterer  in  the  street  under  various  lights,  and 
27 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

in  a  fashion  which  was  always  more  or  less 
casual.  It  is  right,  therefore,  that  in  assign- 
ing its  due  weight  to  this  evidence,  one  should 
examine  it  with  some  care.  We  shall  first 
take  the  three  people  who  actually  saw  the 
murderer. 

There  seems  to  have  been  some  discrepancy 
between  them  from  the  first,  since,  as  has  al- 
ready been  pointed  out,  the  description  pub- 
lished from  the  data  of  Adams  and  Lambie, 
was  modified  after  Barrowman  had  given  her 
information.     Adams  and  Lambie  said: 

"  A  man  between  twenty-five  and  thirty 
years  of  age,  5  feet  8  or  9  inches  in  height, 
slim  build,  dark  hair,  clean  shaven,  dressed  in 
light  grey  overcoat  and  dark  cloth  cap." 

After  collaboration  with  Barrowman  the  de- 
scription became: 

"  Twenty- eight  or  thirty  years  of  age,  tall 
and  thin,  clean  shaven,  his  nose  slightly  turned 
to  one  side.  Wore  one  of  the  popular  round 
tweed  hats  known  as  Donegal  hats,  and 
a  fawn-coloured  overcoat  which  might  have 
been  a  waterproof,  also  dark  trousers  and 
brown  boots." 

28 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Apart  from  the  additions  in  the  second  de- 
scription there  are,  it  will  be  observed,  two 
actual  discrepancies  in  the  shape  of  the  hat 
and  the  colour  of  the  coat. 

As  to  how  far  either  of  these  descriptions 
tallies  with  Slater,  it  may  be  stated  here  that 
the  accused  was  thirty-seven  years  of  age,  that 
he  was  above  the  medium  height,  that  his  nose 
was  not  twisted,  but  was  depressed  at  the  end, 
as  if  it  had  at  some  time  been  broken,  and 
finally  that  eight  witnesses  were  called  upon 
to  prove  that,  on  the  date  of  the  murder, 
the  accused  wore  a  short  but  noticeable  mous- 
tache. 

I  have  before  me  a  verbatim  stenographic 
report  of  the  proceedings  in  New  York  and 
also  in  Edinburgh,  furnished  by  the  kindness 
of  Shaughnessy  &  Co.,  solicitors,  of  Glasgow, 
who  are  still  contending  for  the  interests  of 
their  unfortunate  client.  I  will  here  compare 
the  terms  of  the  identification  in  the  two 
Courts: 
Helen  Lambie,  New  York,  January  26th,  1909. 

Q.  "  Do  you  see  the  man  here  you  saw 
there?" 

29 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

A.     "  One  is  very  suspicious,  if  anything." 

Q.    "Describe  him." 

A.  "  The  clothes  he  had  on  that  night  he 
hasn't  got  on  to-day  —  but  his  face  I  could 
not  tell.    I  never  saw  his  face." 

(Having  described  a  peculiarity  of  walk, 
she  was  asked) : 

Q.    "  Is  that  man  in  the  room?  " 

A.     "  Yes,  he  is,  sir." 

Q.     "  Point  him  out." 

A.     "  I  would  not  like  to  say " 

(After  some  pressure  and  argument  she 
pointed  to  Slater,  who  had  been  led  past  her 
in  the  corridor  between  two  officers,  when 
both  she  and  Barrowman  had  exclaimed: 
"  That  is  the  man,"  or  "  I  could  nearly  swear 
that  is  the  man.") 

Q.  "  Didn't  you  say  you  did  not  see  the 
man's  face?  " 

A.     "  Neither  I  did.     I  saw  the  walk." 

The  reader  must  bear  in  mind  that  Lambie's 
only  chance  of  seeing  the  man's  walk  was  in 
the  four  steps  or  so  down  the  passage.  It 
was  never  at  any  time  shown  that  there  was 
any  marked  peculiarity  about  Slater's  walk. 

30 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Now  take  Helen  Lambie's  identification  in 
Edinburgh,  May  gth,  1909. 

Q.  "  How  did  you  identify  him  in  Amer- 
ica?" 

A.  "  By  his  walk  and  height,  his  dark  hair 
and  the  side  of  his  face." 

Q .  "  You  were  not  quite  sure  of  him  at 
first  in  America?  " 

A.     "  Yes,  I  was  quite  sure." 

Q.  "  Why  did  you  say  you  were  only  sus- 
picions? " 

A.     "  It  was  a  mistake." 

Q.  "  What  did  you  mean  in  America  by 
saying  that  you  never  saw  his  face  if,  in  point 
of  fact,  you  did  see  it  so  as  to  help  you  to 
recognise  it?     What  did  you  mean?  " 

A.     "  Nothing." 

On  further  cross-examination  she  declared 
that  when  she  said  that  she  had  never  seen 
the  man's  face  she  meant  that  she  had  never 
seen  the  "  broad  of  it "  but  had  seen  it  side- 
ways. 

Here  it  will  be  observed  that  Helen  Lam- 
bie's evidence  had  greatly  stiffened  during  the 
three  months  between  the  New  York  and  the 
31 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Edinburgh  proceedings.  In  so  aggressively 
positive  a  frame  of  mind  was  she  on  the  later 
occasion,  that,  on  being  shown  Slater's  over- 
coat and  asked  if  it  resembled  the  murderer's, 
she  answered  twice  over :  "  That  is  the  coat," 
although  it  had  not  yet  been  unrolled,  and 
though  it  was  not  light  grey,  which  was  the 
colour  in  her  own  original  description.  It 
should  not  be  forgotten  in  dealing  with  the 
evidence  of  Lambie  and  Adams  that  they  are 
utterly  disagreed  as  to  so  easily  fixed  a  thing 
as  their  own  proceedings  after  the  hall  door 
was  opened,  Adams  swearing  that  Lambie 
walked  to  nearly  the  end  of  the  hall,  and  Lam- 
bie that  she  remained  upon  the  doormat. 
Without  deciding  which  was  right,  it  is  clear 
that  the  incident  must  shake  one's  confidence 
in  one  or  other  of  them  as  a  witness. 

In  the  case  of  Adams  the  evidence  was  given 
with  moderation,  and  was  substantially  the 
same  in  America  and  in  Scotland. 

"  I  couldn't  say  positively.  This  man  (in- 
dicating Slater)  is  not  at  all  unlike  him." 

Q.     "  Did  you  notice  a  crooked  nose?  " 

A.    "No." 

32 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Q.  "Anything  remarkable  about  his 
walk?" 

A.     "  No." 

Q.  "  You  don't  swear  this  is  the  man  you 
saw?  " 

A.  "  No,  sir.  He  resembles  the  man,  that 
is  all  that  I  can  say." 

In  reply  to  the  same  general  questions  in 
Edinburgh,  he  said: 

"  I  would  not  like  to  swear  he  is  the  man. 
I  am  a  little  near-sighted.  He  resembles  the 
man  closely." 

Barrowman,  the  girl  of  fifteen,  had  met  the 
man  presumed  to  be  the  murderer  in  the  street, 
and  taken  one  passing  glance  at  him  under 
a  gas  lamp  on  a  wet  December's  night  — 
difficult  circumstances  for  an  identification. 
She  used  these  words  in  New  York: 

"  That  man  here  is  something  like  him," 
which  she  afterwards  amended  to  "  very  like 
him."  She  admitted  that  a  picture  of  the 
man  she  was  expected  to  identify  had  been 
shown  to  her  before  she  came  into  the  Court. 
Her  one  point  by  which  she  claimed  to  recog- 
nise the  man  was  the  crooked  nose.    This 

33 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

crooked  nose  was  not  much  more  apparent  to 
others  than  the  peculiarity  of  walk  which  so 
greatly  impressed  Helen  Lambie  that,  after 
seeing  half  a  dozen  steps  of  it,  she  could 
identify  it  with  confidence.  In  Edinburgh 
Barrowman,  like  Lambie,  was  very  much  more 
certain  than  in  New  York.  The  further  they 
got  from  the  event,  the  easier  apparently  did 
recognition  become.  "  Yes,  that  is  the  man 
who  knocked  against  me  that  night,"  she  said. 
It  is  remarkable  that  both  these  females, 
Lambie  and  Barrowman,  swore  that  though 
they  were  thrown  together  in  this  journey  out 
to  New  York,  and  actually  shared  the  same 
cabin,  they  never  once  talked  of  the  object  of 
their  mission  or  compared  notes  as  to  the  man 
they  were  about  to  identify.  For  girls  of  the 
respective  ages  of  fifteen  and  twenty-one  this 
certainly  furnishes  a  unique  example  of  self- 
restraint. 

These,  then,  are  the  three  identifications  by 
the  only  people  who  saw  the  murderer.  Had 
the  diamond  brooch  clue  been  authentic,  and 
these  identifications  come  upon  the  top  of  it, 
they  would  undoubtedly  have  been  strongly 
34 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

corroborative.  But  when  the  brooch  has  been 
shown  to  be  a  complete  mistake,  I  really  do 
not  understand  how  anyone  could  accept  such 
half-hearted  recognitions  as  being  enough 
to  establish  the  identity  and  guilt  of  the  pris- 
oner. 

There  remains  the  so-called  identification  by 
twelve  witnesses  who  had  seen  a  man  loiter- 
ing in  the  street  during  the  weeks  before  the 
crime  had  been  committed.  I  have  said  a 
"  so-called "  identification,  for  the  proceed- 
ings were  farcical  as  a  real  test  of  recognition. 
The  witnesses  had  seen  portraits  of  the  ac- 
cused. They  were  well  aware  that  he  was  a 
foreigner,  and  then  they  were  asked  to  pick 
out  his  swarthy  Jewish  physiognomy  from 
among  nine  Glasgow  policemen  to  two  rail- 
way officials.  Naturally  they  did  it  without 
hesitation,  since  this  man  was  more  like  the 
dark  individual  whom  they  had  seen  and  de- 
scribed than  the  others  could  be. 

Read  their  own  descriptions,  however,  of 
the  man  they  had  seen,  with  the  details  of  his 
clothing,  and  they  will  be  found  in  many  re- 
spects to  differ  from  each  other  on  one  hand, 
35 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

and  in  many  from  Slater  on  the  other.  Here 
is  a  synopsis  of  their  impressions: 

Mrs.  McHafiie.— "  Dark.  Moustached,  light 
overcoat,  not  waterproof,  check  trousers, 
spats.     Black  bowler  hat.     Nose  normal." 

Miss  M.  McHaffie. —  "  Seen  at  same  time 
and  same  description.  Was  only  prepared  at 
first  to  say  there  was  some  resemblance,  but 
*  had  been  thinking  it  over,  and  concluded  that 
he  was  the  man.' " 

Miss  A.  M.  McHaffie. —  "  Same  as  before. 
Had  heard  the  man  speak  and  noticed  nothing 
in  his  accent.  (Prisoner  has  a  strong  German 
accent.)  " 

Madge  McHaffie  (belongs  to  the  same 
family). —  "Dark,  moustached,  nose  normal. 
Check  trousers,  fawn  overcoat  and  spats. 
Black  bowler  hat.  '  The  prisoner  was  fairly 
like  the  man  .'  " 

In  connection  with  the  identification  of  these 
four  witnesses  it  is  to  be  observed  that  neither 
check  trousers,  nor  spats  were  found  in  the 
prisoner's  luggage.  As  the  murderer  was  de- 
scribed as  being  dressed  in  dark  trousers,  there 
was  no  possible  reason  why  these  clothes,  if 
36 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Slater  owned  them,  should  have  been  de- 
stroyed. 

Constable  Brien.  "  Claimed  to  know  the 
prisoner  by  sight.  Says  he  was  the  man  he 
saw  loitering.  Light  coat  and  a  hat.  It  was 
a  week  before  the  crime,  and  he  was  loitering 
eighty  yards  from  the  scene  of  it.  He  picked 
him  out  among  five  constables  as  the  man  he 
had  seen." 

Constable  Walker. —  "  Had  seen  the  loiterer 
across  the  street,  never  nearer,  and  after  dark 
in  December.  Thought  at  first  he  was  some- 
one else  whom  he  knew.  Had  heard  that  the 
man  he  had  to  identify  was  of  foreign  appear- 
ance. Picked  him  out  from  a  number  of  de- 
tectives.    The  man  seen  had  a  moustache." 

Euphemia  Cunningham. —  "  Very  dark,  sal- 
low, heavy  featured.  Clean  shaven.  Nose 
normal.  Dark  tweed  coat.  Green  cap  with 
peak." 

W.  Campbell. —  "  Had  been  with  the  previ- 
ous witness.  Corroborated.  *  There  was  a 
general  resemblance  between  the  prisoner  and 
the  man,  but  he  could  not  positively  identify 
him.' " 

37 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Alex  Gillies. — "  Sallow,  dark  haired  and 
clean  shaven.  Fawn  coat.  Cap.  *  The  pris- 
oner resembled  him,  but  witness  could  not  say 
he  was  the  same  man.' " 

R.  B.  Bryson. —  "Black  coat  and  vest. 
Black  bowler  hat.  No  overcoat.  Black 
moustache  with  droop.  Sallow,  foreign. 
(This  witness  had  seen  the  man  the  night 
before  the  murder.  He  appeared  to  be  look- 
ing up  at  Miss  Gilchrist's  windows.)  " 

A.  Nairn. —  "  Broad  shoulders,  long  neck. 
Dark  hair.  Motor  cap.  Light  overcoat  to 
knees.  Never  saw  the  man's  face.  *  Oh !  I 
will  not  swear  in  fact,  but  I  am  certain  he  is 
the  man  I  saw  —  but  I  will  not  swear.' " 

Mrs.  Liddell. —  "  Peculiar  nose.  Clear  com- 
plexion, not  sallow.  Dark,  clean  shaven, 
brown  tweed  cap.  Brown  tweed  coat  with 
hemmed  edge.  Delicate  man  *  rather  drawn 
together.*  She  believed  that  prisoner  was  the 
man.  Saw  him  in  the  street  immediately  be- 
fore the  murder." 

These  are  the  twelve  witnesses  as  to  the 
identify  of  the  mysterious  stranger.  In  the 
first  place  there  is  no  evidence  whatever  that 
38 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

this  lounger  in  the  street  had  really  anything 
to  do  with  the  murder.  It  is  just  as  probable 
that  he  had  some  vulgar  amour,  and  was  wait- 
ing for  his  girl  to  run  out  to  him.  What 
could  a  man  who  was  planning  murder  hope 
to  gain  by  standing  nights  beforehand  eighty 
and  a  hundred  yards  away  from  the  place  in 
the  darkness?  But  supposing  that  we  waive 
this  point  and  examine  the  plain  question  as 
to  whether  Slater  Vv^as  the  same  man  as  the 
loiterer,  we  find  ourselves  faced  by  a  mass  of 
difficulties  and  contradictions.  Two  of  the 
most  precise  witnesses  were  Nairn  and  Bryson 
who  saw  the  stranger  upon  the  Sunday  night 
preceding  the  murder.  Upon  that  night 
Slater  had  an  unshaken  alibi,  vouched  for  not 
only  by  the  girl,  Antoine,  with  whom  he  lived, 
and  their  servant,  Schmalz,  but  by  an  ac- 
quaintance, Samuel  Reid,  who  had  been  with 
him  from  six  to  ten-thirty.  This  positive  evi- 
dence, which  was  quite  unshaken  in  cross  ex- 
amination, must  completely  destroy  the  sur- 
mises of  the  stranger  and  Slater.  Then  come 
the  four  witnesses  of  the  McHaffie  family  who 
are  all  strong  upon  check  trousers  and  spats, 

39 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

articles  of  dress  which  were  never  traced  to 
the  prisoner.  Finally,  apart  from  the  discrep- 
ancies about  the  moustache,  there  is  a  mixture 
of  bowler  hats,  green  caps,  brown  caps,  and 
motor  caps  which  leave  a  most  confused  and 
indefinite  impression  in  the  mind.  Evidence 
of  this  kind  might  be  of  some  value  if  supple- 
mentary to  some  strong  ascertained  fact,  but 
to  attempt  to  build  upon  such  an  identifica- 
tion alone  is  to  construct  the  whole  case  upon 
shifting  sand. 

The  reader  has  already  a  grasp  of  the  facts, 
but  some  fresh  details  came  out  at  the  trial 
which  may  be  enumerated  here.  They  have  to 
be  lightly  touched  upon  within  the  limits  of 
such  an  argument  as  this,  but  those  who  desire 
a  fuller  summary  will  find  it  in  an  account  of 
the  trial  published  by  Hodge  of  Edinburgh, 
and  ably  edited  by  William  Roughead,  W.S. 
On  this  book  and  on  the  verbatim  precogni- 
tions and  shorthand  account  of  the  American 
proceedings,  I  base  my  own  examination  of 
case.  First,  as  to  Slater's  movements  upon 
the  day  of  the  crime.  He  began  the  day,  ac- 
cording to  the  account  of  himself  and  the 
40 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

women,  by  the  receipt  of  the  two  letters  cil- 
ready  referred  to,  which  caused  him  to  hasten 
his  journey  to  America.  The  whole  day 
seems  to  have  been  occupied  by  preparations 
for  his  impending  departure.  He  gave  his 
servant  Schmalz  notice  as  from  next  Saturday. 
Before  five  (as  was  shown  by  the  postmark 
upon  the  envelope),  he  wrote  to  a  post  office 
in  London,  where  he  had  some  money  on  de- 
posit. At  6.12  a  telegram  was  sent  in  his 
name  and  presumably  by  him  from  the  Central 
Station  to  Dent,  London,  for  his  watch,  which 
was  being  repaired.  According  to  the  evi- 
dence of  two  witnesses  he  was  seen  in  a  bil- 
liard room  at  6.20.  The  murder,  it  will  be 
remembered,  was  done  at  seven.  He  re- 
mained about  ten  minutes  in  the  billiard  room, 
and  left  some  time  between  6.30  and  6.40. 
Rathman,  one  of  these  witnesses,  deposed  that 
he  had  at  the  time  a  moustache  about  a  quar- 
ter of  an  inch  long,  which  was  so  noticeable 
that  no  one  could  take  him  for  a  clean-shaven 
man.  Antoine,  his  mistress,  and  Schmalz,  the 
servant,  both  deposed  that  Slater  dined  at 
home  at  7  o'clock.     The  evidence  of  the  girl 

41 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

is  no  doubt  suspect,  but  there  was  no  possible 
reason  why  the  dismissed  servant  Schmalz 
should  perjure  herself  for  the  sake  of  her  ex- 
employer.  The  distance  between  Slater's  flat 
and  that  of  Miss  Gilchrist  is  about  a  quarter 
of  a  mile.  From  the  billiard  room  to  Slater's 
flat  is  about  a  mile.  He  had  to  go  for  the 
hammer  and  bring  it  back,  unless  he  had  it 
jutting  out  of  his  pocket  all  day.  But  unless 
the  evidence  of  the  two  women  is  entirely  set 
aside,  enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  there 
was  no  time  for  the  commission  by  him  of 
such  a  crime  and  the  hiding  of  the  traces  which 
it  would  leave  behind  it.  At  9.45  that  night, 
Slater  was  engaged  in  his  usual  occupation  of 
trying  to  raise  the  wind  at  some  small  gam- 
bling club.  The  club-master  saw  no  discom- 
posure about  his  dress  (which  was  the  same 
as,  according  to  the  Crown,  he  had  done  this 
bloody  crime  in),  and  swore  that  he  was  then 
wearing  a  short  moustache  "  like  stubble," 
thus  corroborating  Rathman.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  Lambie  and  Barrowman  both 
swore  that  the  murderer  was  clean  shaven. 
On  December  24th,  three  days  after  the  mur- 
42 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

der,  Slater  was  shown  at  Cook's  Office,  bar- 
gaining for  a  berth  in  the  "  Lusitania  "  for  his 
so-called  wife  and  himself.  He  made  no  secret 
that  he  was  going  by  that  ship,  but  gave  his 
real  name  and  address  and  declared  finally 
that  he  would  take  his  berth  in  Liverpool, 
which  he  did.  Among  other  confidants  as  to 
the  ship  was  a  barber,  the  last  person  one 
would  think  to  whom  secrets  would  be  con- 
fided. Certainly,  if  this  were  a  flight,  it  is 
hard  to  say  what  an  open  departure  would  be. 
In  Liverpool  he  took  his  passage  under  the  as- 
sumed name  of  Otto  Sando.  This  he  did,  ac- 
cording to  his  own  account,  because  he  had 
reason  to  fear  pursuit  from  his  real  wife,  and 
wished  to  cover  his  traces.  This  may  or  may 
not  be  the  truth,  but  it  is  undoubtedly  the  fact 
that  Slater,  who  was  a  disreputable,  rolling- 
stone  of  a  man,  had  already  assumed  several 
aliases  in  the  course  of  his  career.  It  is  to  be 
noted  that  there  was  nothing  at  all  secret 
about  his  departure  from  Glasgow,  and  that 
he  carried  off  all  his  luggage  with  him  in  a 
perfectly  open  manner. 

The  reader  is  now  in  possession  of  the  main 
43 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

facts,  save  those  which  are  either  unessential, 
or  redundant.  It  will  be  observed  that  save 
for  the  identifications,  the  value  of  which  can 
be  estimated,  there  is  really  no  single  point  of 
connection  between  the  crime  and  the  alleged 
criminal.  It  may  be  argued  that  the  existence 
of  the  hammer  is  such  a  point;  but  what 
household  in  the  land  is  devoid  of  a  hammer? 
It  is  to  be  remembered  that  if  Slater  com- 
mitted the  murder  with  this  hammer,  he  must 
have  taken  it  with  him  in  order  to  commit 
the  crime,  since  it  could  be  no  use  to  him  in 
forcing  an  entrance.  But  what  man  in  his 
senses,  planning  a  deliberate  murder,  would 
take  with  him  a  weapon  which  was  light,  frail, 
and  so  long  that  it  must  project  from  any 
pocket?  The  nearest  lump  of  stone  upon  the 
road  would  serve  his  purpose  better  than  that. 
Again,  it  must  in  its  blood-soaked  condition 
have  been  in  his  pocket  when  he  came  away 
from  the  crime.  The  Crown  never  attempted 
to  prove  either  blood-stains  in  a  pocket,  or 
the  fact  that  any  clothes  had  been  burned. 
If  Slater  destroyed  clothes,  he  would  naturally 
have  destroyed  the  hammer,  too.     Even  one 

44 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

of  the  two  medical  witnesses  of  the  prosecu- 
tion was  driven  to  say  that  he  should  not  have 
expected  such  a  weapon  to  cause  such  wounds. 

It  may  well  be  that  in  this  summary  of  the 
evidence,  I  may  seem  to  have  stated  the  case 
entirely  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  defence. 
In  reply,  I  would  only  ask  the  reader  to  take 
the  trouble  to  read  the  extended  evidence. 
("  Trial  of  Oscar  Slater  "  Hodge  &  Co.,  Edin- 
burgh.) If  he  will  do  so,  he  will  realise  that 
without  a  conscious  mental  effort  towards 
special  pleading,  there  is  no  other  way  in 
which  the  story  can  be  told.  The  facts  are  on 
one  side.  The  conjectures,  the  unsatisfactory 
identifications,  the  damaging  flaws,  and  the 
very  strong  prejudices  upon  the  other. 

Now  for  the  trial  itself.  The  case  was 
opened  for  the  Crown  by  the  Lord-Advocate, 
in  a  speech  which  faithfully  represented  the 
excited  feeling  of  the  time.  It  was  vigorous 
to  the  point  of  being  passionate,  and  its  effect 
upon  the  jury  was  reflected  in  their  ultimate 
verdict.  The  Lord-Advocate  spoke,  as  I  un- 
derstand, without  notes,  a  procedure  which 
may  well  add  to  eloquence  while  subtracting 
45 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

from  accuracy.  It  is  to  this  fact  that  one 
must  attribute  a  most  fatal  mis-statement 
which  could  not  fail,  coming  under  such  cir- 
cumstances from  so  high  an  authority,  to  make 
a  deep  impression  upon  his  hearers.  For 
some  reason,  this  mis-statement  does  not  ap- 
pear to  have  been  corrected  at  the  moment 
by  either  the  Judge  or  the  defending  counsel. 
It  was  the  one  really  damaging  allegation  — 
so  damaging  that  had  I  myself  been  upon 
the  jury  and  believed  it  to  be  true,  I  should 
have  recorded  my  verdict  against  the  prisoner, 
and  yet  this  one  fatal  point  had  no  substance 
at  all  in  fact.  In  this  incident  alone,  there 
seems  to  me  to  lie  good  ground  for  a  revision 
of  the  sentence,  or  a  reference  of  the  facts 
to  some  Court  or  Committee  of  Appeal. 
Here  is  the  extract  from  the  Lord- Advocate's 
speech  to  which  I  allude: 

"  At  this  time  he  had  given  his  name  to 
Cook's  people  in  Glasgow  as  Oscar  Slater. 
On  December  25th,  the  day  he  was  to  go  back 
to  Cook's  Office  —  his  name  and  his  descrip- 
tion and  all  the  rest  of  it  appear  in  the  Glas- 
gow papers,  and  he  sees  that  the  last  thing  in 
46 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

the  world  that  he  ought  to  do,  if  he  studies 
his  own  safety,  is  to  go  back  to  Cook's  Office 
as  Oscar  Slater.  He  accordingly  proceeds  to 
pack  up  all  his  goods  and  effects  upon  the 
25th.  So  far  as  we  know,  he  never  leaves  the 
house  from  the  time  he  sees  the  paper,  until 
a  little  after  six  o'clock,  when  he  goes  down 
to  the  Central  Station." 

Here  the  allegation  is  clearly  made  and  it  is 
repeated  later  that  Oscar  Slater's  name  was 
in  the  paper,  and  that,  subsequently  to  that, 
he  fled.  Such  a  flight  would  clearly  be  an 
admission  of  guilt.  The  point  is  of  enormous 
even  vital  importance.  And  yet  on  examina- 
tion of  the  dates,  it  will  be  found  that  there  is 
absolutely  no  foundation  for  it.  It  was  not  un- 
til the  evening  of  the  25th  that  even  the  police 
heard  of  the  existence  of  Slater,  and  it  was 
nearly  a  week  later  that  his  name  appeared 
in  the  papers,  he  being  already  far  out  upon 
the  Atlantic.  What  did  appear  upon  the  25th 
was  the  description  of  the  murderer,  already 
quoted :  "  with  his  face  shaved  clean  of  all 
hair,"  &c.,  Slater  at  that  time  having  a 
marked  moustache.     Why  should  he  take  such 

47 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

a  description  to  himself,  or  why  should  he  for- 
bear to  carry  out  a  journey  which  he  had  al- 
ready prepared  for?  The  point  goes  for  ab- 
solutely nothing  when  examined,  and  yet  if 
the  minds  of  the  jury  were  at  all  befogged  as 
to  the  dates,  the  definite  assertion  of  the  Lord- 
Advocate,  twice  repeated,  that  Slater's  name 
had  been  published  before  his  flight,  was 
bound  to  have  a  most  grave  and  prejudiced 
effect. 

Some  of  the  Lord-Advocate's  other  state- 
ments are  certainly  surprising.  Thus  he  says : 
"  The  prisoner  is  hopelessly  unable  to  pro- 
duce a  single  witness  who  says  that  he  was 
anywhere  else  than  at  the  scene  of  the  murder 
that  night."  Let  us  test  this  assertion.  Here 
is  the  evidence  of  Schmalz,  the  servant,  ver- 
batim. I  may  repeat  that  this  woman  was 
under  no  known  obligations  to  Slater  and  had 
just  received  notice  from  him.  The  evidence 
of  the  mistress  that  Slater  dined  in  the  flat 
at  seven  on  the  night  of  the  murder  I  pass, 
but  I  do  not  understand  why  Schmalz's  posi- 
tive corroboration  should  be  treated  by  the 
Lord-Advocate  as  non-existent.  The  prisoner 
48 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

might  well  be  "  hopeless "  if  his  witnesses 
were  to  be  treated  so.  Could  anything  be 
more  positive  than  this? 

Q.  "  Did  he  usually  come  home  to  din- 
ner? " 

A.  "  Yes,  always.  Seven  o'clock  was  the 
usual  hour." 

Q.  "  Was  it  sometimes  nearly  eight? 

A.  "  It  was  my  fault.     Mr.  Slater  was  in." 

Q.  "  But  owing  to  your  fault  was  it  about 
eight  before  it  was  served?" 

A.  "  No.  Mr.  Slater  was  in  after  seven,  and 
was  waiting  for  dinner." 

This  seems  very  definite.  The  murder  was 
committed  about  seven.  The  murderer  may 
have  regained  the  street  about  ten  minutes  or 
quarter  past  seven.  It  was  some  distance  to 
Slater's  flat.  If  he  had  done  the  murder  he 
could  hardly  have  reached  it  before  half-past 
seven  at  the  earliest.  Yet  Schmalz  says  he 
was  in  at  seven,  and  so  does  Antoine.  The 
evidence  of  the  woman  may  be  good  or  bad, 
but  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  anyone 
could  state  that  the  prisoner  was  "  hopelessly 
unable  to  produce,  etc."  What  evidence  could 
49 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

he  give,  save  that  of  everyone  who  lived  with 
him? 

For  the  rest,  the  Lord-Advocate  had  an  easy 
task  in  showing  that  Slater  was  a  worthless 
fellow,  that  he  lived  with  and  possibly  on  a 
woman  of  easy  virtue,  that  he  had  several 
times  changed  his  name,  and  that  generally  he 
was  an  unsatisfactory  Bohemian.  No  actual 
criminal  record  was  shown  against  him. 
Early  in  his  speech,  the  Lord-Advocate  re- 
marked that  he  would  show  later  how  Slater 
may  have  come  to  know  that  Miss  Gilchrist 
owned  the  jewels.  No  further  reference  ap- 
pears to  have  been  made  to  the  matter,  and 
his  promise  was  therefore  never  fulfilled, 
though  it  is  clearly  of  the  utmost  importance. 
Later,  he  stated  that  from  the  appearance  of 
the  wounds,  they  Must  have  been  done  by  a 
small  hammer.  There  is  no  "  must "  in  the 
matter,  for  it  is  clear  that  many  other  weap- 
ons, a  burglar's  jemmy,  for  example,  would 
have  produced  the  same  effect.  He  then 
makes  the  good  point  that  the  prisoner  dealt 
in  precious  stones,  and  could  therefore  dispose 
of  the  proceeds  of  such  a  robbery.  The  crim- 
50 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

inal,  he  added,  was  clearly  someone  who  had 
no  acquaintance  with  the  inside  of  the  house, 
and  did  not  know  where  the  jewels  were  kept. 
"  That  answers  to  the  prisoner."  It  also,  of 
course,  answers  to  practically  every  man  in 
Scotland.  The  Lord-Advocate  then  gave  a 
summary  of  the  evidence  as  to  the  man  seen 
by  various  witnesses  in  the  street.  "  Gentle- 
men, if  that  was  the  prisoner,  how  do  you 
account  for  his  presence  there?  "  Of  course, 
the  whole  point  lies  in  the  italicised  phrase. 
There  was,  it  must  be  admitted,  a  consensus 
of  opinion  among  the  witnesses  that  the  pris- 
oner was  the  man.  But  what  was  it  com- 
pared to  the  consensus  of  opinion  which 
wrongfully  condemned  Beck  to  penal  servi- 
tude? The  counsel  laid  considerable  stress 
upon  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Liddell  (one  of  the 
Adams  family)  had  seen  a  man  only  a  few 
minutes  before  the  murder,  loitering  in  the 
street,  and  identified  him  as  Slater.  The  dress 
of  the  man  seen  in  the  street  was  very  differ- 
ent from  that  given  as  the  murderer's.  He 
had  a  heavy  tweed  mixture  coat  of  a  brown- 
ish hue,  and  a  brown  peaked  cap.  The  orig- 
51 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

inal  identification  by  Mrs.  Liddell  was  con- 
veyed in  the  words :  "  One,  slightly,"  when  she 
was  asked  if  any  of  a  group  at  the  police  sta- 
tion resembled  the  man  she  had  seen.  After- 
wards, like  every  other  female  witness,  she 
became  more  positive.  She  declared  that  she 
had  the  clearest  recollection  of  the  man's  face, 
and  yet  refused  to  commit  herself  as  to 
whether  he  was  shaven  or  moustached. 

We  have  then  the  recognitions  of  Lambie, 
Adams  and  Barrowman,  v/ith  their  limitations 
and  developments,  which  have  been  already 
discussed.  Then  comes  the  question  of  the 
so-called  "  flight "  and  the  change  of  name 
upon  the  steamer.  Had  the  prisoner  been  a 
man  who  had  never  before  changed  his  name, 
this  incident  would  be  more  striking.  But 
the  short  glimpse  we  obtain  of  his  previous 
life  show  several  changes  of  name,  and  it  has 
not  been  suggested  that  each  of  them  was  the 
consequence  of  a  crime.  He  seems  to  have 
been  in  debt  in  Glasgow  and  he  also  appears 
to  have  had  reasons  for  getting  away  from  the 
pursuit  of  an  ill-used  wife.  The  Lord-Advo- 
cate said  that  the  change  of  name  "  could  not 
52 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

be  explained  consistently  with  innocence." 
That  may  be  true  enough,  but  the  change  can 
surely  be  explained  on  some  cause  less  grave 
than  murder.  Finally,  after  showing  very 
truly  that  Slater  was  a  great  liar  and  that  not 
a  word  he  said  need  be  believed  unless  there 
were  corroboration,  the  Lord-Advocate  wound 
up  with  the  words :  "  My  submission  to  you  is 
that  this  guilt  has  been  brought  fairly  home 
to  him,  that  no  shadow  of  doubt  exists,  that 
there  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  he  was  the 
perpetrator  of  this  foul  murder."  The  ver- 
dict showed  that  the  jury,  under  the  spell  of 
the  Lord-Advocate's  eloquence,  shared  this 
view,  but,  viewing  it  in  colder  blood,  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  see  upon  what  grounds  he  made  so 
confident  an  assertion. 

Mr.  M'Clure,  who  conducted  the  defence, 
spoke  truly  when,  in  opening  his  speech,  he 
declared  that  "he  had  to  fight  a  most  unfair 
fight  against  public  prejudice,  roused  with  a 
fury  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  in  any 
other  case."  Still  he  fought  this  fight  bravely 
and  with  scrupulous  moderation.  His  appeals 
were  all  to  reason  and  never  to  emotion.     He 

53 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

showed  how  clearly  the  prisoner  had  expressed 
his  intention  of  going  to  America,  weeks  be- 
fore the  murder,  and  how  every  preparation 
had  been  made.  On  the  day  after  the  murder 
he  had  told  witnesses  that  he  was  going  to 
America  and  had  discussed  the  advantages  of 
various  lines,  finally  telling  one  of  them  the 
particular  boat  in  which  he  did  eventually 
travel,  curious  proceedings  for  a  fugitive  from 
justice.  Mr.  M'Clure  described  the  move- 
ments of  the  prisoner  on  the  night  of  the  mur- 
der, after  the  crime  had  been  committed, 
showing  that  he  was  wearing  the  very  clothes 
in  which  the  theory  of  the  prosecution  made 
him  do  the  deed,  as  if  such  a  deed  could  be 
done  without  leaving  its  traces.  He  showed 
incidentally  (it  is  a  small  point,  but  a  human 
one)  that  one  of  the  last  actions  of  Slater  in 
Glasgow  was  to  take  great  trouble  to  get  an 
English  five-pound  note  in  order  to  send  it  as 
a  Christmas  present  to  his  parents  in  Ger- 
many. A  man  who  could  do  this  was  not  all 
bad.  Finally,  Mr.  M'Clure  exposed  very 
clearly  the  many  discrepancies  as  to  identifi- 
cation and  warned  the  jury  solemnly  as  to  the 

54 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

dangers  which  have  been  so  often  proved  to 
lurk  in  this  class  of  evidence.  Altogether,  it 
was  a  broad,  comprehensive  reply,  though 
where  so  many  points  were  involved,  it  is 
natural  that  some  few  may  have  been  over- 
looked. One  does  not,  for  example,  find  the 
counsel  as  insistent  as  one  might  expect  upon 
such  points  as,  the  failure  of  the  Crown  to 
show  how  Slater  could  have  known  anything 
at  all  about  the  existence  of  Miss  Gilchrist  and 
her  jewels,  how  he  got  into  the  flat,  and  what 
became  of  the  brooch  which,  according  to  their 
theory,  he  had  carried  off.  It  is  ungracious 
to  suggest  any  additions  to  so  earnest  a  de- 
fence, and  no  doubt  one  who  is  dependent 
upon  printed  accounts  of  the  matter  may  miss 
points  which  were  actually  made,  but  not 
placed  upon  record. 

Only  on  one  point  must  Mr.  M'Clure's  judg- 
ment be  questioned,  and  that  is  on  the  most 
difficult  one,  which  a  criminal  counsel  has  ever 
to  decide.  He  did  not  place  his  man  in  the 
box.  This  should  very  properly  be  taken  as 
a  sign  of  weakness.  I  have  no  means  of  say- 
ing what  considerations  led  Mr.  M'Clure  to 

55 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

this  determination.  It  certainly  told  against 
his  client.  In  the  masterly  memorial  for  re- 
prieve drawn  up  by  Slater's  solicitor,  the  late 
Mr.  Spiers,  it  is  stated  with  the  full  inner 
knowledge  which  that  solicitor  had,  that  Slater 
was  all  along  anxious  to  give  evidence  on  his 
own  behalf.  "  He  was  advised  by  his  counsel 
not  to  do  so,  but  not  from  any  knowledge  of 
guilt.  He  had  undergone  the  strain  of  a  four 
days*  trial.  He  speaks  rather  broken  English, 
although  quite  intelligible  —  with  a  foreign 
accent,  and  be  had  been  in  custody  since 
January."  It  must  be  admitted  that  these 
reasons  are  very  unconvincing.  It  is  much 
more  probable  that  the  counsel  decided  that  i 
the  purely  negative  evidence  which  his  client 
could  give  upon  the  crime  would  be  dearly 
paid  for  by  the  long  recital  of  sordid  amours 
and  blackguard  experiences  which  would  be 
drawn  from  him  on  cross-examination  and 
have  the  most  damning  effect  upon  the  minds 
of  a  respectable  Edinburgh  jury.  And  yet, 
perhaps,  counsel  did  not  sufficiently  consider 
the  prejudice  which  is  excited  —  and  rightly 
excited  —  against  the  prisoner  who  shuns  the 

56 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

box.  Some  of  this  prejudice  might  have  been 
removed  if  it  had  been  made  more  clear  that 
Slater  had  volunteered  to  come  over  and  stand 
his  trial  of  his  own  free  will,  without  waiting 
for  the  verdict  of  the  extradition  proceedings. 

There  remains  the  summing  up  of  Lord 
Guthrie.  His  Lordship  threw  out  the  surmise 
that  the  assassin  may  well  have  gone  to  the 
flat  without  any  intention  of  murder.  This 
is  certainly  possible,  but  in  the  highest  de- 
gree improbable.  He  commented  with  great 
severity  upon  Slater's  general  character.  In 
his  summing-up  of  the  case,  he  recapitulated 
the  familiar  facts  in  an  impartial  fashion,  con- 
cluding with  the  words,  "  I  suppose  that  you 
all  think  that  the  prisoner  possibly  is  the  mur- 
derer. You  may  very  likely  all  think  that  he 
probably  is  the  murderer.  That,  however, 
will  not  entitle  you  to  convict  him.  The 
Crown  have  undertaken  to  prove  that  he  is 
the  murderer.  That  is  the  question  you  have 
to  consider.  If  you  think  there  is  no  reason- 
able doubt  about  it,  you  will  convict  him;  if 
you  think  there  is,  you  will  acquit  him." 

In  an  hour  and  ten  minutes  the  jury  had 
57 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

made  up  their  mind.  By  a  majority  they 
found  the  prisoner  guilty.  Out  of  fifteen, 
nine,  as  was  afterwards  shown,  were  for  guilty, 
five  for  non-proven,  and  one  for  not  guilty. 
By  English  law,  a  new  trial  would  have  been 
needed,  ending,  possibly,  as  in  the  Gardiner 
case,  in  the  complete  acquittal  of  the  pris- 
oner. By  Scotch  law  the  majority  verdict  held 
good. 

"  I  know  nothing  about  the  affair,  abso- 
lutely nothing,"  cried  the  prisoner  in  a  frenzy 
of  despair.  "  I  never  heard  the  name.  I 
know  nothing  about  the  affair.  I  do  not  know 
how  I  could  be  connected  with  the  affair.  I 
know  nothing  about  it.  I  came  from  America 
on  my  own  account.     I  can  say  no  more." 

Sentence  of  death  was  then  passed. 

The  verdict  was,  it  is  said,  a  complete  sur- 
prise to  most  of  those  in  the  Court,  and  cer- 
tainly is  surprising  when  examined  after  the 
event.  I  do  not  see  how  any  reasonable  man 
can  carefully  weigh  the  evidence  and  not  ad- 
mit that  when  the  unfortunate  prisoner  cried, 
"  I  know  nothing  about  it,"  he  was  possibly, 
and  even  probably,  speaking  the  literal  truth. 
58 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Consider  the  monstrous  coincidence  which  is 
involved  in  his  guilt,  the  coincidence  that  the 
police  owing  to  their  mistake  over  the  brooch, 
by  pure  chance  started  out  in  pursuit  of  the 
right  man.  Which  is  A  Priori  the  more  prob- 
able: That  such  an  unheard-of  million-to-one 
coincidence  should  have  occurred,  Or,  that  the 
police,  having  committed  themselves  to  the 
theory  that  he  was  the  murderer,  refused  to 
admit  that  they  were  wrong  when  the  bottom 
fell  out  of  the  original  case,  and  persevered  in 
the  hope  that  vague  identifications  of  a  queer- 
looking  foreigner  would  justify  their  original 
action?  Outside  these  identifications,  I  must 
repeat  once  again  there  is  nothing  to  couple 
Slater  with  the  murder,  or  to  show  that  he 
ever  knew,  or  could  have  knov/n  that  such  a 
person  as  Miss  Gilchrist  existed. 

The  admirable  memorial  for  a  reprieve 
drawn  up  by  the  solicitors  for  the  defence,  and 
reproduced  at  the  end  of  this  pamphlet,  was 
signed  by  20,000  members  of  the  public,  and 
had  the  effect  of  changing  the  death  sentence 
to  one  of  penal  servitude  for  life.  The  sen- 
tence was  passed  on  May  6th.     For  twenty 

59 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

days  the  man  was  left  in  doubt,  and  the  writ- 
ten reprieve  only  arrived  on  May  26th  within 
twenty-four  hours  of  the  time  for  the  execu- 
tion. On  July  8th  Slater  was  conveyed  to  the 
Peterhead  Convict  prison.  There  he  has  now 
been  for  three  years,  and  there  he  still  re- 
mains. 

I  cannot  help  in  my  own  mind  comparing 
the  case  of  Oscar  Slater  with  another,  which 
I  had  occasion  to  examine  —  that  of  George 
Edalji.  I  must  admit  that  they  are  not  of  the 
same  class.  George  Edalji  was  a  youth  of 
exemplary  character.  Oscar  Slater  was  .a 
blackguard.  George  Edalji  was  physically  in- 
capable of  the  crime  for  which  he  suffered 
three  years'  imprisonment  (years  for  which 
he  has  not  received,  after  his  innocence  was 
established,  one  shilling  of  compensation  from 
the  nation).  Oscar  Slater  might  conceivably 
have  committed  the  murder,  but  the  balance  of 
proof  and  probability  seems  entirely  against 
it.  Thus,  one  cannot  feel  the  same  burning 
sense  of  injustice  over  the  matter.  And  yet 
I  trust  for  the  sake  of  our  character  not  only 
for  justice,  but  for  intelligence,  that  the  judg- 
60 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

merit  may  in  some  way  be  reconsidered  and 
the  man's  present  punishment  allowed  to 
atone  for  those  irregularities  of  life  which 
helped  to  make  his  conviction  possible. 

Before  leaving  the  case  it  is  interesting  to 
see  how  far  this  curious  crime  may  be  re- 
constructed and  whether  any  possible  light 
can  be  thrown  upon  it.  Using  second-hand 
material  one  cannot  hope  to  do  more  than  in- 
dicate certain  possibilities  which  may  already 
have  been  considered  and  tested  by  the  police. 
The  trouble,  however,  with  all  police  prosecu- 
tions is  that,  having  once  got  what  they  imag- 
ine to  be  their  man,  they  are  not  very  open 
to  any  line  of  investigation  which  might  lead 
to  other  conclusions.  Everything  which  will 
not  fit  into  the  official  theory  is  liable  to  be 
excluded.  One  might  make  a  few  isolated 
comments  on  the  case  which  may  at  least  give 
rise  to  some  interesting  trains  of  thought. 

One  question  which  has  to  be  asked  was 
whether  the  assassin  was  after  the  jewels  at 
all.  It  might  be  urged  that  the  type  of  man 
described  by  the  spectators  was  by  no  means 
that  of  the  ordinary  thief.  When  he  reached 
6i 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

the  bedroom  and  lit  the  gas,  he  did  not  at 
once  seize  the  watch  and  rings  which  were 
lying  openly  exposed  upon  the  dressing-table. 
He  did  not  pick  up  a  half-sovereign  which  was 
lying  on  the  dining-room  table.  His  attention 
was  given  to  a  wooden  box,  the  lid  of  which 
he  wrenched  open.  (This,  I  think,  was  "  the 
breaking  of  sticks"  heard  by  Adams.)  The 
papers  in  it  were  strewed  on  the  ground. 
Were  the  papers  his  object,  and  the  final  ab- 
straction of  one  diamond  brooch  a  mere  blind  ? 
Personally,  I  can  only  point  out  the  possibility 
of  such  a  solution.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
might  be  urged,  if  the  thief's  action  seems  in- 
consequential, that  Adams  had  rung  and  that 
he  already  found  himself  in  a  desperate  situa- 
tion. It  might  be  said  also  that  save  a  will  it 
would  be  difficult  to  imagine  any  paper  which 
would  account  for  such  an  enterprise,  while  the 
jewels,  on  the  other  hand,  were  an  obvious 
mark  for  whoever  knew  of  their  existence. 

Presuming  that  the  assassin  was  indeed  after 
the  jewels,  it  is  very  instructive  to  note  his 
knowledge  of  their  location,  and  also  its  limi- 
tations. Why  did  he  go  straight  into  the  spare 
62 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

bedroom  where  the  jewels  were  actually 
kept?  The  same  question  may  be  asked  with 
equal  force  if  we  consider  that  he  was  after 
the  papers.  Why  the  spare  bedroom?  Any 
knowledge  gathered  from  outside  (by  a 
watcher  in  the  back-yard  for  example)  would 
go  to  the  length  of  ascertaining  which  was  the 
old  lady's  room.  One  would  expect  a  robber 
who  had  gained  his  information  thus,  to  go 
straight  to  that  chamber.  But  this  man  did 
not  do  so.  He  went  straight  to  the  unlikely 
room  in  which  both  jewels  and  papers  actually 
were.  Is  not  this  remarkably  suggestive? 
Does  it  not  pre-suppose  a  previous  acquaint- 
ance with  the  inside  of  the  flat  and  the  ways  of 
its  owner? 

But  now  note  the  limitations  of  the  knowl- 
edge. If  it  were  the  jewels  he  was  after,  he 
knew  what  room  they  were  in,  but  not  in 
what  part  of  the  room.  A  fuller  knowledge 
would  have  told  him  they  were  kept  in  the 
wardrobe.  And  yet  he  searched  a  box.  If 
he  was  after  papers,  his  information  was  com- 
plete; but  if  he  was  indeed  after  the  jewels, 
then  we  can  say  that  he  had  the  knowledge 
63 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

of  one  who  is  conversant,  but  not  intimately 
conversant,  with  the  household  arrangements. 
To  this  we  may  add  that  he  would  seem  to 
have  shown  ignorance  of  the  habits  of  the  in- 
mates, or  he  would  surely  have  chosen  Lam- 
bie's  afternoon  or  evening  out  for  his  attempt, 
and  not  have  done  it  at  a  time  when  the  girl 
was  bound  to  be  back  within  a  very  few  min- 
utes. What  men  had  ever  visited  the  house? 
The  number  must  have  been  very  limited. 
What  friends?  v/hat  tradesmen?  what  plumb- 
ers? Who  brought  back  the  jewels  after  they 
had  been  stored  with  the  jewellers  when  the 
old  lady  v/ent  every  year  to  the  country?  One 
is  averse  to  throw  out  vague  suspicions  which 
may  give  pain  to  innocent  people,  and  yet  it 
is  clear  that  there  are  lines  of  inquiry  here 
which  should  be  followed  up,  however  nega- 
tive the  results. 

How  did  the  murderer  get  in  if  Lambie  is 
correct  in  thinking  that  she  shut  the  doors? 
I  cannot  get  away  from  the  conclusion  that 
he  had  duplicate  keys.  In  that  case  all  be- 
comes comprehensible,  for  the  old  lady  — 
whose  faculties  were  quite  normal  —  would 
64 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

hear  the  lock  go  and  would  not  be  alarmed, 
thinking  that  Lambie  had  returned  before  her 
time.  Thus,  she  would  only  know  her  danger 
when  the  murderer  rushed  into  the  room,  and 
would  hardly  have  time  to  rise,  receive  the 
first  blow,  and  fall,  as  she  was  found,  beside 
the  chair,  upon  which  she  had  been  sitting. 
That  is  intelligible.  But  if  he  had  not  the 
keys,  consider  the  difficulties.  If  the  old  lady 
had  opened  the  flat  door  her  body  would  have 
been  found  in  the  passage.  Therefore,  the 
police  were  driven  to  the  hypothesis  that  the 
old  lady  heard  the  ring,  opened  the  lower  stair 
door  from  above  (as  can  be  done  in  all  Scotch 
flats) ,  opened  the  flat  door,  never  looked  over 
the  lighted  stair  to  see  who  was  coming  up, 
but  returned  to  her  chair  and  her  magazine, 
leaving  the  door  open,  and  a  free  entrance  to 
the  murderer.  This  is  possible,  but  is  it  not 
in  the  highest  degree  improbable?  Miss  Gil- 
christ was  nervous  of  robbery  and  would  not 
neglect  obvious  precautions.  The  ring  came 
immediately  after  the  maid's  departure.  She 
could  hardl}^  have  thought  that  it  was  her 
returning,  the  less  so  as  the  girl  had  the  keys 

65 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

and  would  not  need  to  ring.  If  she  went  as 
far  as  the  hall  door  to  open  it,  she  only  had 
to  take  another  step  to  see  who  was  ascending 
the  stair.  Would  she  not  have  taken  it  if  it 
were  only  to  say :  "  What,  have  you  forgotten 
your  keys  ?  "  That  a  nervous  old  lady  should 
throw  open  both  doors,  never  look  to  see  who 
her  visitor  was,  and  return  to  her  dining-room 
is  very  hard  to  believe. 

And  look  at  it  from  the  murderer's  point  of 
view.  He  had  planned  out  his  proceedings.  It 
is  notorious  that  it  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world  to  open  the  lower  door  of  a  Scotch  flat. 
The  blade  of  any  penknife  will  do  that.  If  he 
was  to  depend  upon  ringing  to  get  at  his  vic- 
tim, it  was  evidently  better  for  him  to  ring  at 
the  upper  door,  as  otherwise  the  chance  would 
seem  very  great  that  she  would  look  down,  see 
him  coming  up  the  stair,  and  shut  herself  in. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  he  were  at  the  upper 
door  and  she  answered  it,  he  had  only  to  push 
his  way  in.  Therefore,  the  latter  would  be 
his  course  if  he  rang  at  all.  And  yet  the  po- 
lice theory  is  that  though  he  rang,  he  rang 
from  below.  It  is  not  what  he  would  do,  and 
66 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

if  he  did  do  it,  it  would  be  most  unlikely  that 
he  would  get  in.  How  could  he  suppose  that 
the  old  lady  would  do  so  incredible  a  thing  as 
leave  her  door  open  and  return  to  her  reading? 
If  she  waited,  she  might  even  up  to  the  last 
instant  have  shut  the  door  in  his  face.  If  one 
weighs  all  these  reasons,  one  can  hardly  fail, 
I  think,  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
murderer  had  keys,  and  that  the  old  lady  never 
rose  from  her  chair  until  the  last  instant,  be- 
cause, hearing  the  keys  in  the  door,  she  took 
it  for  granted  that  the  maid  had  come  back. 
But  if  he  had  keys,  how  did  he  get  the  mould, 
and  how  did  he  get  them  made?  There  is  a 
line  of  inquiry  there.  The  only  conceivable 
alternatives  are,  that  the  murderer  was  ac- 
tually concealed  in  the  flat  when  Lambie  came 
out,  and  of  that  there  is  no  evidence  whatever, 
or  that  the  visitor  was  some  one  whom  the 
old  lady  knew,  in  which  case  he  would  natur- 
ally have  been  admitted. 

There  are  still  one  or  two  singular  points 
which  invite  comment.  One  of  these,  which  I 
have  incidentally  mentioned,  is  that  neither 
the  match,  the  match-box,  nor  the  box  opened 
in  the  bedroom  showed  any  marks  of  blood. 
67 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Yet  the  crime  had  been  an  extraordinarily 
bloody  one.  This  is  certainly  very  singular. 
An  explanation  given  by  Dr.  Adams  who  was 
the  first  medical  man  to  view  the  body  is 
worthy  of  attention.  He  considered  that  the 
wounds  might  have  been  inflicted  by  prods 
downwards  from  the  leg  of  a  chair,  in  which 
case  the  seat  of  the  chair  would  preserve  the 
clothes  and  to  some  extent  the  hands  of  the 
murderer  from  bloodstains.  The  condition  of 
one  of  the  chairs  seemed  to  him  to  favour  this 
supposition.  The  explanation  is  ingenious, 
but  I  must  confess  that  I  cannot  understand 
how  such  wounds  could  be  inflicted  by  such 
an  instrument.  There  were  in  particular  a 
number  of  spindle-shaped  cuts  with  a  bridge 
of  skin  between  them  which  are  very  suggest- 
ive. My  first  choice  as  to  the  weapon  which 
inflicted  these  would  be  a  burglar's  jemmy, 
which  is  bifurcated  at  one  end,  while  the  blow 
which  pushed  the  poor  woman's  eye  into  her 
brain  would  represent  a  thrust  from  the  other 
end.  Failing  a  jemmy,  I  should  choose  a 
hammer,  but  a  very  different  one  from  the 
toy  thing  from  a  half-crown  card  of  tools 
68 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

which  was  exhibited  in  Court.  Surely  com- 
monsense  would  say  that  such  an  instrument 
could  burst  an  eye-ball,  but  could  not  possibly 
drive  it  deep  into  the  brain,  since  the  short 
head  could  not  penetrate  nearly  so  far.  The 
hammer,  which  I  would  reconstruct  from  the 
injuries  would  be  what  they  call,  I  believe,  a 
plasterer's  ham.mer,  short  in  the  handle,  long 
and  strong  in  the  head,  with  a  broad  fork  be- 
hind. But  how  such  a  weapon  could  be  used 
without  the  user  bearing  marks  of  it,  is  more 
than  I  can  say.  It  has  never  been  explained 
why  a  rug  was  laid  over  the  murdered  woman. 
The  murderer,  as  his  conduct  before  Lambie 
and  Adams  showed,  was  a  perfectly  cool  per- 
son. It  is  at  least  possible  that  he  used  the 
rug  as  a  shield  between  him  and  his  victim 
while  he  battered  her  with  his  weapon.  His 
clothes,  if  not  his  hands,  would  in  this  way 
be  preserved. 

I  have  said  that  it  is  of  the  first  importance 
to  trace  who  knew  of  the  existence  of  the 
jewels,  since  this  might  greatly  help  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem.  In  connection  with  this 
there  is  a  passage  in  Lambie's  evidence  in 
69 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

New  York  which  is  of  some  importance.  I 
give  it  from  the  stenographer's  report,  con- 
densing in  places : 

Q.     "  Do   you   know   in   Glasgow   a   man 
named ?  " 

A.     "  Yes,  sir." 

Q.     "  What  is  his  business?  " 

A.     "  A  book-maker." 

Q.     "When  did  you  first  meet  him?" 

A.     "  At  a  dance." 

Q.     "What  sort  of  dance?" 

A.     "  A  New  Year's  dance."     (That  would 
be  New  Year  of  1908.) 

Q.     "  When  did  you  meet  him  after  that?  " 

A.     "  In  the  beginning  of  June." 

Q.     "Where?" 

A.    "  In  Glasgow." 

Q.     "At  a  street  corner?  " 

A.     "  No,    he    came   up   to    the   house   at 
Prince's  Street." 

Q.     "Miss  Gilchrist's  house?" 

A.     "  Yes,  sir." 

Q.     "  That  was  the   first  time  since  the 
dance?  " 

A.     "  Yes,  sir." 

70 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Q.  "  Do  you  deny  that  you  had  a  meeting 
with  him  by  a  letter  received  from  him  at  a 
corner  of  a  street  in  Glasgow?  " 

A.     "  I  got  a  letter." 

Q.     "  To  meet  him  at  a  street  comer?  " 

A.     "  Yes." 

Q.     "The  first  meeting  after  the  dance?" 

A.     "  Yes." 

Q.     "  And  you  met  him  there?  " 

A.     "  Yes." 

Q.     "And  you  went  out  with  him?" 

A.     "  No,  I  did  not  go  out  with  him." 

Q.  "  You  went  somewhere  with  him, 
didn't  you?  " 

A.  "  Yes,  I  made  an  appointment  for  Sun- 
day." 

Q.  "  Did  you  know  anything  about  the 
man?  " 

A.     "  Yes,  I  did,  sir." 

Q.     "  What  did  you  know  about  him?  " 

A.     "  I  didn't  know  much." 

Q.  "  How  many  times  did  he  visit  you  at 
Miss  Gilchrist's  house?  " 

A.     "  Once." 

Q.     "  Quite  sure  of  that?  ** 
71 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

A.  "  Quite  sure." 

Q.  "  Didn't  he  come  and  take  tea  with  you 

there  in  her  apartment?" 

A.  "That  was  at  the  Coast." 

Q.  "  Then  he  came  to  see  you  at  Miss  Gil- 
christ's summer  place?  " 

A.  "Yes." 

Q.  "  How  many  times?  " 

A.  "Once." 

Q.  "  Did  he  meet  Miss  Gilchrist  then?  " 

A.  "Yes,  sir." 

Q.  "  You  introduced  him?  " 

A.  "Yes,  sir." 

Q.  "  Did  she  wear  this  diamond  brooch?  " 

A.  "I  don't  remember." 

Q.  "  When  did  you  next  see  him?  " 

A.  "  The  first  week  in  September." 

Q.  "  In  Glasgow?  " 

A.  "  Yes,  sir." 

Q.  "By  appointment?" 

A.  "Yes." 

Q.  "When  next?" 

A.  "  I  have  not  met  him  since." 

Q.  "And  you  say  he  only  called  once  at 
the  country  place  ?  " 

72 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

A.     "  Once,  sir." 

Q.  "  In  your  Glasgow  deposition  you  say: 
*  He  visited  me  at  Girvan  and  was  entertained 
at  tea  with  me  on  Saturday  night,  and  at  din- 
ner on  Sunday  with  Miss  Gilchrist  and  me.'  " 

A.     "  Yes,  sir." 

Q.  "  Then  you  did  see  him  more  than  once 
in  the  country." 

A.     "  Once." 

He  read  the  extract  again  as  above. 

Q.     "Was  that  true?" 

A.     "  Yes." 

Q.  "  Then  you  invited  this  man  to  tea  at 
Miss  Gilchrist's  summer  house?" 

A.     "  Yes." 

Q.     "  On  Saturday  night?  " 

A.     "  Yes." 

Q.     "  And  on  Sunday  night?  " 

A.     "He  wasn't  there." 

Q.  "  On  Sunday  you  invited  him  there  to 
dinner  with  Miss  Gilchrist  and  yourself, 
didn't  you?" 

A.     "Yes,  sir.     I  didn't  invite  him." 

Q.     "  Who  invited  him." 

A.     "Miss  Gilchrist." 
73 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Q.     "Had  you  introduced  him?" 

A.     "  Yes,  sir." 

Q.     "  He  was  your  friend,  wasn't  he?  " 

A.     "  Yes,  sir." 

Q.     "  She  knew  nothing  about  him?  " 

A.     "  No." 

Q.  "  She  took  him  to  the  house  on  your 
recommendation?  " 

A.    "Yes." 

Q.  "  Did  she  wear  her  diamonds  at  thisi 
dinner  party?  " 

A.     "  I  don't  remember." 

Q.  "  You  told  him  that  she  was  a  rich 
woman?  '* 

A.    "Yes." 

Q.  "  Did  you  tell  him  that  she  had  a  great 
many  jewels?  " 

A.     "  Yes." 

Q.  "  Have  your  suspicions  ever  turned 
towards  this  man?  " 

A.     "  Never." 

Q.     "  Do  you  know  o£  any  other  man  who 

would  be  as  familiar  with  those  premises,  the 

wealth  of  the  old  lady,  her  jewelry,  and  the 

way  to  get  into  the  premises  as  that  man?  " 

74 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

A.  "No,  sir." 

Q.  "  Was  the  man  you  met  in  the  hall- 
way this  man  ?  " 

A.     "No,  sir." 

This  is  a  condensation  of  a  very  interesting 
and  searching  piece  of  the  cross-examination 
which  reveals  several  things.  One  is  Lam- 
bie's  qualities  as  a  witness.  Another  is  the 
very  curious  picture  of  the  old  lady,  the  book- 
maker and  the  servant-maid  all  sitting  at  din- 
ner together.  The  last  and  most  important 
is  the  fact,  that  a  knowledge  of  the  jewels  had 
got  out.  Against  the  man  himself  there  is 
no  possible  allegation.  The  matter  was 
looked  into  by  the  police,  and  their  conclu- 
sions were  absolute,  and  were  shared  by  those 
responsible  for  the  defence.  But  is  it  to  be  be- 
lieved that  during  the  months  which  elapsed 
between  this  man  acquiring  this  curious  knowl- 
edge, and  the  actual  crime,  never  once 
chanced  to  repeat  to  any  friend,  who  in  turn 
repeated  it  to  another,  the  strange  story  of  the 
lonely  old  woman  and  her  hoard?  This  he 
would  do  in  full  innocence.  It  was  a  most 
natural  thing  to  do.    But,  for  almost  the  first 

75 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

time  in  the  case  we  seem  to  catch  some 
glimpse  of  the  relation  between  possible  cause 
and  effect,  some  connection  between  the  dead 
woman  on  one  side,  and  outsiders  on  the  other 
who  had  the  means  of  knowing  something  of 
her  remarkable  situation. 

There  is  just  one  other  piece  of  Lambie's 
cross-examination,  this  time  from  the  Edin- 
burgh trial,  which  I  would  desire  to  quote. 
It  did  not  appear  in  America,  just  as  the 
American  extract  already  given  did  not  ap- 
pear in  Edinburgh.  For  the  first  time  they 
come  out  together : 

Q.  "  Did  Miss  Gilchrist  use  to  have  a 
dog?  " 

A.     "  Yes,  an  Irish  terrier." 

Q.    "What  happened  to  it?" 

A.     "  It  got  poisoned." 

Q.     "  When  was  it  poisoned?  " 

A.  "  I  think  on  the  7th  or  8th  of  Septem- 
ber." 

Q.  "  Was  that  thought  to  be  done  by  some 
one?" 

A.  "I  did  not  think  it,  for  I  thought  it 
might  have  eaten  something,  but  Miss  Gil- 
76 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Christ  thought  it  was  poisoned  by  some  one." 

Q.  "  To  kill  the  watch-dog  —  was  that  the 
idea?" 

A.     "  She  did  not  say." 

The  reader  should  be  reminded  that  Slater 
did  not  arrive  in  Glasgow  until  the  end  of 
October  of  that  year.  His  previous  residences 
in  the  town  were  as  far  back  as  igoi  and 
1905.  If  the  dog  were  indeed  poisoned  in 
anticipation  of  the  crime,  he,  at  least,  could 
have  had  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

There  is  one  other  piece  of  evidence  which 
may,  or  may  not  have  been  of  importance. 
It  is  that  of  Miss  Brown,  the  schoolmistress. 
This  lady  was  in  court,  but  seems  to  have  been 
called  by  neither  side  for  the  reason  that  her 
evidence  was  helpful  to  neither  the  prosecu- 
tion nor  the  defence.  She  deposed  that  on  the 
night  of  the  murder,  about  ten  minutes  past 
seven,  she  saw  two  men  running  away  from 
^the  scene.  One  of  these  men  closely  corre- 
sponded to  the  original  description  of  the  mur- 
derer before  it  was  modified  by  Barrowman. 
This  one  was  of  medium  build,  dark  hair  and 
clean  shaven,  with  three-quarter  length  grey 

77 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

overcoat,  dark  tweed  cap,  and  both  hands  in 
his  pockets.  Here  we  have  the  actual  assas- 
sin described  to  the  life,  and  had  Miss 
Brown  declared  that  this  man  was  the 
prisoner,  she  would  have  been  a  for- 
midable addition  to  the  witnesses  for 
prosecution.  Miss  Brown,  however  iden- 
tified Oscar  Slater  (after  the  usual  ab- 
surd fashion  of  such  identifications)  as  the  sec- 
ond man,  whom  she  describes,  as  of  "  Dark 
glossy  hair,  navy  blue  overcoat  with  velvet 
collar,  dark  trousers,  black  boots,  something 
in  his  hand  which  seemed  clumsier  than  a 
walking  stick."  One  would  imagine  that  this 
object  in  his  hand  would  naturally  be  his  hat, 
since  she  describes  the  man  as  bare-headed. 
All  that  can  be  said  of  this  incident  is  that 
if  the  second  man  was  Slater,  then  he  certainly 
was  not  the  actual  murderer  whose  dress  cor- 
responds closely  to  the  first,  and  in  no  particu- 
lar to  the  second.  To  the  Northern  eye,  all 
swarthy  foreigners  bear  a  resemblance,  and 
that  there  was  a  swarthy  man,  whether  for- 
eign or  not,  concerned  in  this  affair  would 
seem  to  be  beyond  question.  That  there 
78 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

should  have  been  two  confederates,  one  of 
whom  had  planned  the  crime  while  the  other 
carried  it  out,  is  a  perfectly  feasible  supposi- 
tion. Miss  Brown's  story  does  not  necessarily 
contradict  that  of  Barrowman,  as  one  would 
imagine  that  the  second  man  would  join  the 
murderer  at  some  little  distance  from  the 
scene  of  the  crime.  However,  as  there  was  no 
cross-examination  upon  the  story,  it  is  difficult 
to  know  what  weight  to  attach  to  it. 

Let  me  say  in  conclusion  that  I  have  had 
no  desire  in  anything  said  in  this  argument, 
to  hurt  the  feelings  or  usurp  the  functions  of 
anyone,  whether  of  the  police  or  the  criminal 
court,  who  had  to  do  with  the  case.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  discuss  matters  from  a  detached  point 
of  view  without  giving  offence.  I  am  well 
aware  that  it  is  easier  to  theorise  at  a  distance 
than  to  work  a  case  out  in  practice  whether 
as  detective  or  as  counsel.  I  leave  the  matter 
now  with  the  hope  that,  even  after  many  days, 
some  sudden  flash  may  be  sent  which  will 
throw  a  light  upon  as  brutal  and  callous  a 
crime  as  has  ever  been  recorded  in  those 
black  annals  in  which  the  criminologist  finds 

79 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

the  materials  for  his  study.  Meanwhile  it  is 
on  the  conscience  of  the  authorities,  and  in  the 
last  resort  on  that  of  the  community  that  this 
verdict  obtained  under  the  circumstances 
which  I  have  indicated,  shall  now  be  recon- 
sidered. 

Arthur  Conan  Doyle. 
Windlesham, 
Crowborough. 


80 


COPY  OF  MEMORIAL 
FOR  REPRIEVE 


8i 


UNTO  THE  RIGHT  HONOURABLE  LORD 
PENTLAND,   HIS   MAJESTY'S   SECRE- 
TARY OF  STATE  FOR  SCOTLAND 
MEMORIAL 
ON  BEHALF  OP 
OSCAR  SLATER 

THIS  Memorial  is  humbly  presented  on  be- 
half of  Oscar  Slater  presently  a  Prisoner 
in  the  Prison  of  Glasgow,  who  was,  in  the  High 
Court  of  Justiciary  at  Edinburgh,  on  Thurs- 
day, the  sixth  day  of  May,  Nineteen  hundred  and 
nine,  found  guilty  of  the  charge  of  murdering 
Miss  Marion  Gilchrist  in  her  house  in  West 
Princes  Street,  Glasgow,  and  sentenced  to  death. 
The  Prisoner  is  a  Jew,  and  was  born  in  Ger- 
many.    He  is  37  years  of  age. 

The  Jury  returned  a  verdict  of  "  Guilty  "  by 
a  majority  of  nine  to  six,  and  the  legal  advisers 
of  the  condemned  man  hold  a  very  strong  opin- 
ion that  the  verdict  of  the  majority  of  the  Jury 
was  not  in  accordance  with  the  evidence  led, 
and  that  this  evidence  was  quite  insufficient  to 
identify  the  Prisoner  with  the  murderer,  and  so 
to  establish  the  Prisoner's  guilt.  This  view,  they 
believe,  is  shared  by  the  general  public  of  all 
classes  in  Scotland,  and  by  the  Glasgow  press 
83 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

(vide  leading  article  in  The  Glasgow  Herald  o£ 
7th  May,  1909,  sent  herewith). 

Your  Memorialist  has  endeavoured  in  this 
paper  to  deal  with  the  matter  as  briefly  and  with 
as  little  argument  as  possible;  but  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  the  trial  of  the  Prisoner  occupied 
four  days,  it  is  inevitable  that  the  Memorial 
should  extend  to  some  length. 

It  is  common  ground  that  the  late  Miss  Gil- 
christ, a  lady  of  about  82  years  of  age,  resided 
alone  with  her  domestic  servant,  Nellie  Lambie, 
a  girl  of  about  21  years  of  age. 

According  to  the  evidence  of  Lambie,  the  lat- 
ter left  Miss  Gilchrist  alone  in  the  house  at 
seven  o'clock  on  the  evening  of  21st  December, 
1908,  and  went  to  purchase  an  evening  paper. 
Lambie  deponed  that  she  securely  shut  the  house 
door  behind  her,  and  also  the  door  at  the  close, 
or  street  entry;  that  she  was  only  absent  about 
ten  minutes ;  that  on  returning  about  ten  minutes 
past  seven  o'clock  she  found  the  close  door  open ; 
that  upon  ascending  the  stair  she  found  Mr. 
Adams,  a  gentleman  who  resides  in  the  flat  be- 
low, standing  at  Miss  Gilchrist's  house  door; 
that  Adams  informed  her  that  he  had  gone  up  to 
Miss  Gilchrist's  door  because  he  had  heard  knock- 
ing on  the  floor  of  Miss  Gilchrist's  house,  and 
had  rung  the  bell,  but  that  he  could  obtain  no 
admittance;  that  the  lobby  was  lighted  by  one 

84 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

gas  jet  turned  half  up,  but  giving  a  good  light; 
that  Lambie  thereupon  opened  the  house  door 
with  her  keys;  that  upon  the  door  being  opened 
a  man  came  through  the  lobby  or  hall  of  Miss 
Gilchrist's  house,  passed  Lambie  and  Adams, 
went  downstairs,  and  disappeared ;  and  that,  upon 
Lambie  and  Adams  entering  the  house,  they 
found  Miss  Gilchrist  lying  on  the  dining-room 
floor  dead,  her  head  having  been  smashed. 

Upon  the  Wednesday  following  the  murder 
(23rd  December,  1908),  the  Glasgow  Police  were 
informed  by  a  message  girl  named  Mary  Bar- 
rowman  (about  15  years  of  age),  that  she  had 
seen  a  man  wearing  a  Donegal  hat  and  a  light 
coat  running  out  of  the  close  which  leads  from 
the  street  to  Miss  Gilchrist's  house  shortly  after 
seven  o'clock  on  the  night  of  the  murder;  that 
the  man  passed  her,  running  at  top  speed;  that 
she  noticed  that  he  was  dark,  and  clean  shaven, 
and  that  his  nose  was  twisted  towards  the  right 
side.  The  servant  Lambie  had  also  informed  the 
Police  that  a  gold  cresent  brooch,  set  in  dia- 
monds, had  disappeared  from  Miss  Gilchrist's 
house  on  the  night  of  the  murder,  and  that  this 
was  all  of  Miss  Gilchrist's  property  that  she 
missed.  These  statements  were  published  in  the 
Glasgow  newspapers  on  Friday,  25th  December, 
1908,  and  following  upon  this  the  witness  Allan 
Maclean,  a  member  of  a  club  to  which  Slater  be- 

85 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

longed,  informed  the  Police  that  Slater's  appear- 
ance somewhat  corresponded  with  the  descrip- 
tion advertised,  and  that  he  had  been  trying  to 
sell  a  pawn  ticket  for  a  diamond  brooch.  Fol- 
lowing up  this  clue,  the  Police  went  to  Slater's 
house  at  69,  St.  George's  Road,  Glasgow,  on  the 
night  of  Friday,  25th  December,  and  learned  that 
he  and  Miss  Andree  Antoine,  with  whom  he  had 
been  cohabiting,  had  left  Glasgow  that  night  with 
their  belongings.  The  Police  thereafter  ascer- 
tained that  Slater  had  sailed  on  the  "  Lusitania  " 
for  New  York  from  Liverpool  on  Saturday,  26th 
December,  and  cabled  to  the  Authorities  at  New 
York  to  detain  and  search  him  on  his  arrival. 
This  was  done,  and  the  pawn  ticket,  which  he 
had  been  trying  to  sell,  was  found  upon  him, 
but  turned  out  to  be  a  pawn  ticket  for  a  brooch 
which  belonged  to  Miss  Antoine,  had  never  be- 
longed to  Miss  Gilchrist,  and  had  been  pawned 
a  considerable  time  before  the  murder.  Proceed- 
ings^ however,  were  instituted  for  Slater's  ex- 
tradition. The  witnesses  Lambie,  Adams,  and 
Barrowman  gave  evidence  in  America,  purport- 
ing to  identify  him  as  the  man  seen  leaving  Miss 
Gilchrist's  house,  and  Slater  was  (he  states  of 
his  own  consent)  extradited,  and  brought  back 
to  Scotland  for  trial. 

An  advertisement  was  published  by  the  Au- 
thorities in  Glasgow  offering  a  reward  of  £200 
86 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

for  information  which  would  lead  to  the  arrest 
of  the  murderer. 

The  only  evidence  against  Slater,  which  might 
be  called  direct  evidence,  was  the  evidence  of  the 
persons  who  saw  a  man  walk  out  of  the  lobby 
or  hall  in  Miss  Gilchrist's  house  on  the  night  of 
the  murder  (Lambie  and  Adams),  or  leaving  the 
close  leading  therefrom,  or  running  along  the 
street  (Barrowman). 

At  the  trials  Lambie  professed  to  identify 
Slater,  as  the  man  whom  she  had  seen  leaving 
the  house,  by  the  side  of  his  face.  It  was  put 
to  her,  however,  and  clearly  proved,  that  when 
she  gave  evidence  in  New  York  in  the  extradi- 
tion proceedings  she  stated  in  Court  there  that 
she  did  not  see  the  man's  face,  and  professed  to 
identify  him  by  his  walk.  When  Slater's  own 
coat,  the  one  found  in  his  luggage,  was  shown 
to  her  at  the  trial,  she  at  once  remarked,  even 
before  it  was  unrolled,  that  it  was  not  like  the 
coat  the  man  in  the  lobby  wore  —  it  was  the 
coat.  It  was  obviously  impossible  that  she 
knew  it  to  be  the  same  coat.  Lord  Guthrie  re- 
ferred to  this  in  his  charge  to  the  jury  as  a 
typical  example  of  the  nature  of  her  evidence. 
With  regard  to  the  positive  nature  of  her  evi- 
dence generally,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  her 
first  answer  in  America,  when  asked  if  she  saw 
the  man,  was,  "  One  is  very  suspicious,  if  any- 

87 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

thing."  She  stated  that,  when  she  saw  Slater 
in  the  Central  Police  Office  at  Glasgow,  she 
recognised  him  in  his  "  own  coat."  It  was 
proved  that  he  was  not  then  wearing  his  own 
coat,  but  one  with  which  he  had  been  dressed 
for  identification  purposes. 

The  witness  only  saw  the  man  who  was  leav- 
ing the  house  for  a  moment  or  two.  Adams  and 
she  contradicted  each  other  as  to  where  she  was 
when  the  man  walked  across  the  lobby.  Adams 
deponed  that  she  was  by  the  lobby  clock  and 
walking  towards  the  kitchen.  If  so,  she  must 
practically  have  had  her  back  to  the  man.  She 
says  she  was  on  the  threshold  of  the  door.  In 
any  event,  her  view  was  momentary. 

The  witness  Adams,  who  deponed  that  he  had 
a  better  view  of  the  man  in  the  house  than 
Lambie,  stated  at  the  trial  that  he,  standing  at 
the  threshold,  saw  the  man's  face  as  he  ap- 
proached, that  their  eyes  met,  and  that  the  man 
walked  slowly  towards  him,  face  to  face,  but 
Adams  would  not  go  further  than  to  say  that 
Slater  resembled  the  man  very  much.  He  is 
superior  to  Lambie  and  Barrowman  in  years, 
education  and  intelligence.  Your  Memorialist 
begs  to  emphasise  the  fact  that  this  witness  had 
a  much  better  view  of  the  man  than  any  of  the 
other  witnesses. 

The  witness  Barrowman  stated  at  the  trial 
88 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

that  the  man  ran  out  of  the  close  and  rushed 
past  her  at  top  speed,  brushing  against  her,  and 
that  he  had  his  hat  pulled  well  down  over  his 
forehead.  The  witness  is  a  message  girl,  about 
15  years  of  age.  She  also  stated  that  the  man 
had  on  brown  boots,  a  Donegal  hat,  and  a  fawn 
coat,  and  that  he  was  dark  and  clean  shaven,  and 
that  his  nose  had  a  twist  to  the  right.  She  pro- 
fessed to  have  noticed  all  these  things  as  he 
rushed  past  her  at  top  speed.  At  the  trial  this 
witness  stated  in  cross-examination  (i)  that  she 
was  proceeding  in  the  opposite  direction  from 
the  man,  to  deliver  a  parcel,  but  that  she  turned 
and  went  some  distance  after  him;  that  she 
thought  he  was  probably  going  to  catch  a  tram- 
car;  but  she  could  not  explain  why  she  should 
go  out  of  her  way  to  turn  and  follow  a  man 
running  for  a  car  in  a  busy  city  like  Glasgow; 
and  (2)  that,  although  the  girl  Lambie  and  she 
had  occupied  the  same  cabin  on  the  voyage  to 
America,  which  lasted  about  twelve  days,  she 
had  not  once  discussed  the  appearance  of  the 
man,  and  that  no  one  had  warned  her  not  to  do 
so.  These  two  statements  do  not  impress  your 
Memorialist  as  bearing  the  stamp  of  truth. 
This  girl  started  the  description  of  the  twisted 
nose.  She  is  the  only  witness  who  refers  to  it. 
Her  view  of  the  man's  face  must  necessarily  have 
been  momentary.  Slater's  nose  cannot  properly 
89 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

be  described  as  "  twisted  to  the  right."  It  has 
a  noticeable  prominence  in  the  centre.   . 

All  of  these  three  witnesses  had,  as  has  been 
said,  only  a  momentary  view  of  the  man,  and  it 
was  proved  that  before  Barrowman  professed  to 
identify  Slater  in  New  York  she  was  shown  his 
photograph,  and  that  both  she  and  Lambie,  be- 
fore attempting  to  identify  him  in  New  York, 
saw  him  being  brought  into  Court  by  a  Court 
official,  wearing  a  badge.  In  her  New  York  evi- 
dence she  first  said,  "  He  is  something  like  the 
man  I  saw."  At  the  trial  she  stated  that 
he  was  the  man.  These  facts  very  much  reduce, 
if  they  do  not  altogether  vitiate,  the  value  of  the 
evidence  of  these  identifying  witnesses. 

Another  witness,  Mrs.  Liddell,  who  is  a  mar- 
ried sister  of  the  witness  Adams,  stated  that,  at 
five  minutes  to  seven  on  the  evening  of  the  mur- 
der, she  saw  a  dark,  clean-shaven  man  leaning 
against  a  railing  at  the  street  entry  to  Miss  Gil- 
christ's house,  but  that  this  man  wore  a  heavy 
brown  tweed  coat  and  a  brown  cap.  It  is  to  be 
observed  that  Constable  Neil,  who  passed  the 
house  at  ten  minutes  to  seven,  saw  no  one  there ; 
and  Lambie,  who  left  the  house  promptly  at 
seven,  or,  as  she  said  in  America,  "  perhaps  a 
few  minutes  before  seven,"  saw  no  one  there. 
Further,  Mrs.  Liddell  did  not  observe  where  the 
man  went  to;  according  to  her  he  merely  glided 
go 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

away;  and  although  she  was  in  Miss  Gilchrist's 
house  that  night  and  saw  the  body,  and  would 
naturally  be  greatly  concerned  over  the  murder, 
she  did  not  recollect  having  seen  this  man  until 
the  Wednesday  after  the  murder.  Even  taking 
her  evidence  as  absolutely  true  and  reliable,  it 
provides  an  excellent  object-lesson  on  the  diffi- 
culty and  responsibility  of  convicting  on  such 
evidence  as  this,  because  the  man  she  saw  was 
obviously  dressed  differently  from  the  man  seen 
by  the  other  three  witnesses.  Her  evidence  does 
not,  to  any  appreciable  extent,  further  the  case 
against  Slater,  as  she  stated  that  she  thought 
this  man  was  Slater,  but  admitted  that  she  might 
be  in  error. 

The  other  witness  is  a  girl  named  Annie  Ar- 
mour, a  ticket  clerk  in  the  Subway  Station  at 
Kelvinbridge,  who  says  that  between  7.30  and 
8  that  evening  a  man,  whom  she  identified  as 
Slater,  rushed  past  her  office  without  waiting 
for  a  ticket,  and  seemed  excited.  Lord  Guthrie 
in  his  charge  to  the  jury  did  not  refer  to  this 
witness,  and  your  Memorialist  thinks  advisedly. 
The  mere  question  of  time  is  sufficient  to  render 
her  evidence  valueless.  She  is  sure  the  incident 
did  not  happen  before  7.30.  According  to  the 
other  witnesses,  the  murderer  must  have  run 
from  the  house  by  at  least  7.15.  It  was  proved 
that  it  would  only  take  a  man  five  or  six  min- 

91 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

utes  to  run  from  the  scene  of  the  tragedy  to  this 
station,  either  by  the  most  direct  route  or  by  the 
route  which  Barrowman's  evidence  suggests  he 
took.  Then  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  she 
could  get  anything  like  a  good  view,  even  of 
the  side  face,  of  a  man  who  rushed  past  her  in 
the  way  she  described. 

All  the  witnesses  who  saw  the  man  on  the 
night  of  the  murder  (Monday)  say  that  he  was 
clean  shaven.  It  was  proved  that  on  the  next 
day  or  two  after  the  murder  Slater  had  a  short, 
black,  stubbly  moustache. 

These  were  the  only  witnesses  called  by  the 
Crown  to  identify  Slater  with  the  murderer. 
Further  circumstantial  evidence,  however,  was 
led  by  the  Crown  to  show  that,  on  occasions  be- 
fore the  day  of  the  murder.  Slater  had  been  seen 
standing  in  or  walking  up  and  down  West 
Princes  Street  —  Mrs.  M'Haffie,  her  daughters 
and  niece,  Campbell,  Cunningham,  Bryson, 
Nairn,  and  O'Brien  and  Walker  (two  police- 
men). It  may  be  noted  that  Slater's  house  was 
situated  about  three  minutes'  walk  from  West 
Princes  Street. 

These  witnesses  did  not  all  agree  in  their  evi- 
dence. Some  said  that  Slater  was  the  man  they 
had  seen;  others,  equally  or  perhaps  better  able 
to  judge,  only  said  that  he  was  very  like  him. 
The  Memorialist  does  not  propose  in  this  paper 
92 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

to  deal  at  length  with  this  part  of  the  evidence, 
except  to  point  out  that  two  witnesses  (Nairn 
and  Bryson)  say  they  saw  Slater  in  West 
Princes  Street  on  the  Sunday  evening  previous 
to  the  murder.  Against  this  there  is  the  evi- 
dence that  Slater  on  this  day,  as  usual,  spent  all 
Sunday  (day  and  evening)  in  his  house.  Three 
witnesses  from  Paris,  London,  and  Dublin  spoke 
to  this.  Coming  from  different  places,  they  had 
no  chance  to  concoct  a  story. 

At  Slater's  trial  it  was  suggested  that  there 
were  various  circumstances  tending  to  create  an 
atmosphere  of  suspicion  around  him;  but  it  is 
submitted  that  all  these  were  capable  of  explana- 
tion, and  in  no  way  pointing  to  Slater's  guilt  as 
a  murderer.  Slater  had  written  to  Cameron  that 
he  could  prove  where  he  was  on  the  evening  of 
the  murder  "  by  five  people."  When  this  letter 
was  written,  he  thought  that  the  date  of  the  mur- 
der was  the  Tuesday,  the  22nd. 

The  evidence  of  his  witnesses  was  to  the  effect 
that  on  the  evening  of  the  murder  he  was  in  a 
billiard  room  until  6.30  p.  m.,  after  which  he  went 
home  for  dinner. 

It  was  shown  that  Slater  dealt  in  diamonds. 
There  was,  however,  no  evidence  of  any  dishon- 
est dealing  of  any  kind.  The  brooch  said  to  have 
been  missing  from  Miss  Gilchrist's  house  has  not 
been  traced.  There  was  no  evidence  of  any  kind 
93 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

led  to  show  that  Slater  ever  knew,  or  even  heard 
of,  Miss  Gilchrist  or  her  house,  and  the  Memorial- 
ist would  emphasise  the  fact  that  it  was  the  miss- 
ing brooch  that  put  the  Police  on  the  track  of 
Slater. 

With  reference  to  Slater's  departure  for  Amer- 
ica on  25th  December,  igo8,  it  was  proved  that 
he  had  formed  the  intention,  some  weeks  before 
the  murder,  of  going  to  America.  Cameron, 
Rattman,  and  Aumann  proved  this.  Slater  had, 
in  fact,  tried  to  get  the  last  named  to  take  over 
his  flat.  The  letter  from  Jacobs,  of  28th  De- 
cember, and  the  card  bearing  the  words  "  address 
till  30th  December,"  produced  by  the  Crown,  also 
corroborate  the  evidence  of  this  intention  of 
leaving,  which  is  further  corroborated  by  the 
evidence  of  Nichols,  the  barber,  a  Crown  wit- 
ness. 

On  the  morning  of  21st  December,  1908,  Slater 
received  two  letters  —  one  from  London,  stating 
that  his  wife  was  demanding  his  address,  and 
the  other  from  San  Francisco,  asking  him  to  come 
over.  These  were  spoken  to  by  Schmalz,  his 
servant  girl,  and  Miss  Antoine.  Further  cor- 
roboration of  his  intention  to  leave  is  (i)  on  the 
morning  of  21st  December  he  raised  a  further 
£30  from  Mr.  Liddell,  pawnbroker,  on  his 
brooch,  and  on  the  same  day  tried  to  sell  the 
ticket;  (2)  he  wrote  to  the  Post  Office  for  pay- 

94 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

ment  of  the  money  at  his  credit ;  (3)  he  wired  to 
Dent,  London,  to  send  on  his  watch,  which  was 
being  repaired,  immediately;  (4)  on  the  Monday 
morning  he  gave  notice  to  the  servant  girl  that 
she  would  not  be  required  after  the  following 
Saturday  (these  events  all  happened  before  the 
murder) ;  (5)  on  the  Tuesday  morning  he  re- 
deemed a  pair  of  binoculars  from  another  pawn- 
broker whose  assistant,  Kempton,  proved  this, 
and  who  stated  that  he  was  in  no  way  excited; 
(6)  on  the  23rd  and  24th  December  he  made  in- 
quiries at  Cook's  Shipping  Offices  regarding 
berths,  and  betrayed  no  signs  of  any  excitement ; 
on  the  23rd  he  was,  in  the  evening,  in  Johnston's 
billiard  room,  which  he  used  to  frequent;  and 
on  the  24th  he  spent  the  afternoon  about  Glas- 
gow with  his  friend  Cameron,  who  gave  evi- 
dence; (7)  on  Friday  morning  a  Mrs.  Freedman 
and  her  sister  arrived  from  London  to  take  over 
his  flat,  so  that  he  and  Miss  Antoine  left  on  Fri- 
day night. 

A  rumour  got  abroad  at  the  time  to  the  effect 
that  he  booked  to  London  and  left  the  train  at 
Liverpool.  This  rumour  was  published  in  the 
various  newspapers,  to  Slater's  great  prejudice, 
but  nothing  of  the  kind  was  proved  at  the  trial. 
The  Police  were  evidently  misled  by  the  fact 
that  he  went  by  a  London  train,  but  it  was 
proved  that  there   were  two   carriages   in  that 

95 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

train  for  Liverpool,  and  also  that  Slater's  luggage, 
consisting  of  nine  boxes,  was  labelled  to  Liver- 
pool. The  Porter  who  labelled  the  luggage  was 
called,  and  stated  that  Slater  told  him  that  he 
was  going  to  Liverpool,  and  entered  a  Liverpool 
carriage. 

The  point  was  also  raised  against  Slater  that 
he  used  various  aliases.  He  had  been  staying 
apart  from  his  wife  for  about  four  years,  during 
which  time  he  cohabited  with  Miss  Antoine. 
She  stated  that  Slater's  wife  was  a  drunken 
woman,  and  caused  him  a  deal  of  trouble.  At 
one  time  he  adopted  the  name  of  "  George," 
and  when  he  came  to  Glasgow  on  the  last  oc- 
casion he  took  the  name  of  "  Anderson."  On  the 
voyage  to  America  he  took  the  name  of  Otto 
Sando,  because  his  luggage  was  labelled  O.  S. 
At  times  he  called  himself  a  dentist.  There  was 
no  evidence  that  he  really  was  a  dentist.  Miss 
Antoine  explained  that  he  adopted  the  title  of 
dentist,  as  he  required  a  designation  of  some  sort, 
although  he  was  a  gambler.  A  great  deal  was 
published  in  the  newspapers  about  a  hammer 
that  had  been  found  in  one  of  his  boxes.  This 
turned  out  to  be  an  ordinary  small  domestic 
nail  hammer,  purchased  on  a  card  containing 
several  other  tools,  the  lot  costing  only  2s.  6d. 
He,  of  course,  took  the  hammer  to  America  with 
him  with  all  the  rest  of  his  belongings. 
96 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Nothing  incriminating  was  found  in  any  of  hi» 
boxes. 

No  evidence  whatever  was  led  to  show  how 
the  murderer  gained  access  to  the  house. 

It  will  be  conceded  that  identification  evidence, 
especially  in  a  serious  charge  of  this  kind,  must 
be  examined  very  carefully,  and  should  have  little 
weight  attached  to  it,  unless  it  is  very  clear. 

To  sum  up,  the  only  real  evidence  in  the  case 
is  that  of  those  v^ho  saw  a  man  running  away  on 
the  night  of  the  murder ;  and,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,  these  witnesses  had  only  a  momentary 
glance  at  him.  Adams  does  not  positively  iden- 
tify the  prisoner  as  the  man.  He  says  he  closely 
resembles  him. 

Lambie's  New  York  evidence  has  already  been 
referred  to,  and  her  evidence  at  the  trial  cannot 
be  reconciled  with  it. 

Lambie  and  Barrowman  both  saw  him  in  cus- 
tody before  trying  to  identify  him  in  New  York, 
and  the  latter,  before  identifying  him,  was  shown 
his  photograph. 

All  the  other  identifying  witnesses  called  to 
give  evidence  as  to  his  having  been  seen  in  the 
vicinity  on  days  previous  to  the  murder  were 
taken  down  to  the  General  Police  Office  when 
Slater  returned  from  America  to  identify  him. 
They  were  shown  into  one  room  together,  and 
then  separately  taken  into  a  room  in  the  Police 

97 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Office,  where  Slater  was  amongst  about  a  dozen 
men,  none  of  whom  were  like  him.  (Cunning- 
ham says  she  could  see  that  the  other  men  were 
policemen  in  plain  clothes.)  All  these  witnesses 
knew  that  Slater  had  arrived  from  America,  and 
was  in  the  room.  They  had  all  read  his  descrip- 
tion in  the  newspapers,  or  had  seen  his  photo- 
graph. They  all,  therefore,  looked  for,  and  had 
no  difficulty  in  pointing  out,  a  dark,  foreign- 
looking  man,  with  a  somewhat  peculiarly  shaped 
nose.  It  is  submitted  that  this  is  not  identifica- 
tion evidence  in  the  proper  sense  at  all.  Had 
these  people  been  able  to  pick  out,  as  their  man, 
from  amongst  several  others,  a  man  whose 
description  they  only  knew  from  what  they 
had  previously  seen  of  him,  unassisted  by 
description,  and  unassisted  by  a  photograph,  the 
value  of  their  evidence  would  have  been  entirely 
different. 

Some  Crown  witnesses  identified  him  as  the 
man  they  had  seen  and  talked  to  (Shipping 
Clerk,  Porter,  &c.),  but  they,  of  course,  were 
able  to  do  so.  None  of  the  identifying  witnesses 
had  ever  spoken  to  him. 

Identification  evidence  is  a  class  of  evidence 
which  the  law  distrusts.  The  most  famous 
authority  is  the  case  of  Adolf  Beck.  Beck  was, 
in  1896,  sentenced  to  seven  years'  penal  servitude, 
on  the  evidence  of  ten  women,  who  swore  posi- 
98 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

tively  that  he  was  a  man  whom  they  had  each 
met  on  two  occasions,  and  spent  some  time  with 
in  their  own  houses,  and  who  had  defrauded 
them,  and  on  the  evidence  of  two  poHcemen,  who 
sv/ore  positively  that  Beck  was  the  man  who  had 
been  previously  convicted  of  similar  crimes, 
taken  along  with  certain  circumstantial  evidence 
—  that  he  was  known  to  frequent  a  hotel  on  the 
notepaper  of  which  one  of  the  women  had  re- 
ceived a  letter.  Again,  in  1904,  Beck  was  con- 
victed of  similar  crimes  on  similar  evidence.  It 
was  subsequently  demonstrated  that  Beck  com- 
mitted none  of  the  crimes,  but  that  a  man  bear- 
ing a  general  similarity  to  him  was  the  criminal. 

In  the  report  issued  by  the  Commission  ap- 
pointed to  investigate  the  matter,  consisting  of 
Lord  Collins,  Sir  Spencer  Walpole,  and  Sir  John 
Edge,  the  following  passage  occurs :  — "  Evi- 
dence of  identity,  upon  personal  impression,  how- 
ever bona  fide,  is  of  all  classes  of  evidence  the 
least  to  be  relied  upon,  and,  unless  supported 
by  other  evidence,  an  unsafe  basis  for  the  ver- 
dict of  a  Jury." 

Now,  the  evidence  in  the  Beck  case  was  in- 
finitely more  overwhelming  and  consistent  than 
in  this  case ;  and  the  report  in  the  Beck  case,  and 
the  report  on  which  it  followed,  make  it  clear 
that  on  the  evidence  in  this  case  the  Jury  had 
no  right  to  bring  in  a  verdict  of  "  Guilty." 

99 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

A  good  deal  was  said  by  the  learned  Lord  Ad- 
vocate to  the  Jury  about  Slater's  immoral  char- 
acter. It  was  not  disputed  that  he  was  a  gam- 
bler. It  was  also  admitted  that  he  had  co- 
habited for  about  four  years  with  Madame  An- 
toine,  who  was  of  doubtful  virtue,  and  who  gave 
evidence.  Yet  the  learned  Lord  Advocate  ad- 
dressed the  Jury  to  the  effect  that  the  prisoner 
"  had  followed  a  life  which  descended  to  the  very 
depth  of  human  degradation,  for,  by  the  univer- 
sal judgment  of  mankind,  the  man  who  lived 
upon  the  proceeds  of  prostitution  has  sunk  to  the 
lowest  depth,  and  all  moral  sense  in  him  had 
been  destroyed."  This  he  cited  as  proof  of  the 
disappearance  of  an  obstacle  which  had  pre- 
viously been  in  his  way,  viz :  —  Whether  it  was 
conceivable  that  such  a  man  as  Slater  could  com- 
mit such  an  inhumanly  brutal  crime.  The  only 
evidence  on  that  point  was  that  of  Cameron, 
Slater's  friend,  who,  in  cross-examination,  said  he 
had  heard  that  Slater  lived  on  the  earnings  of 
prostitution,  but  who  did  not  say  he  knew.  The 
Jury  were  distinctly  told  by  the  Lord  Advocate, 
and  by  the  prisoner's  Counsel,  and  by  the  Judge, 
to  banish  from  their  minds  anything  they  had 
heard  regarding  the  man's  character;  but  they 
had  previously  heard  all  about  it,  and  the  Memo- 
rialist feels  strongly  that  they  were  evidently  un- 
able to  do  so. 

100 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Public  feeling  is  also  very  strong  on  the  point 
that  the  question  of  Slater's  character  should 
never  have  been  brought  before  the  Jury. 

The  Memorialist  thinks  it  is  only  fair  to  pris- 
oner to  point  out  that  he  was  all  along  anxious 
to  give  evidence  on  his  own  behalf.  He  was  ad- 
vised by  his  Counsel  not  to  do  so,  but  not  from 
any  knowledge  of  guilt.  He  had  undergone  the 
strain  of  a  four  days'  trial.  He  speaks  rather 
broken  English  —  although  quite  intelligibly  — 
with  a  foreign  accent,  and  he  had  been  in  custody 
since  January. 

Apart  from  what  has  been  set  forth  above, 
your  Memorialist  begs  to  draw  attention  to  the 
fact  that  on  the  Crown  list  of  witnesses  is  the 
name  of  a  witness,  Miss  Agnes  Brown  (No.  46). 
This  lady  is  30  years  of  age,  and  a  very  intelligent 
school  teacher.  Your  Memorialist  is  informed 
that  she  told  the  Police  and  Procurator-Fiscal 
that  on  the  night  of  the  murder,  about  ten  min- 
utes past  seven  o'clock,  two  men  in  company 
rushed  along  West  Princes  Street  from  the  direc- 
tion of  Miss  Gilchrist's  house,  and  passed  close 
to  her  at  the  corner  of  West  Princes  Street  and 
West  Cumberland  Street;  that  one  of  them  was 
dressed  in  a  blue  Melton  coat  with  a  dark  vel- 
vet collar,  black  boots,  and  without  a  hat;  that 
both  men  ran  past  the  opening  of  West  Cumber- 
land Street,  straight  on  along  West  Princes 
101 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

Street,  crossed  West  Princes  Street,  and  ran 
down  Rupert  Street,  a  street  further  west,  and 
opening  off  the  opposite  side  of  West  Princes 
Street.  Your  Memorialist  understands  that,  in 
the  identification  proceedings  before  referred  to, 
this  witness  pointed  out  Slater  as  the  man  in  the 
Melton  coat,  as  she  thought.  This  witness's  evi- 
dence is  thus  in  sharp  contradiction  on  material 
points  to  that  of  the  message  girl  Barrowman 
(who  had  only  a  momentary  glance  at  the  man), 
but  upon  whose  evidence  so  much  weight  has 
evidently  been  laid,  and  who  says  that  Slater 
was  dressed  in  a  light  coat,  a  Donegal  hat,  and 
brown  boots,  was  alone,  and  ran  down  West 
Cumberland  Street. 

Your  Memorialist  respectfully  submits  that 
this  illustrates  the  danger  of  convicting  a  man 
upon  the  kind  of  evidence  given  in  this  case. 
Miss  Brown  was  in  attendance  at  the  trial,  but 
was  not  called  as  a  witness.  Even  on  the  evi- 
dence led,  the  votes  of  two  more  jurymen  in  his 
favour  would  have  liberated  the  prisoner.  In 
England  the  probability  is  that  a  conviction 
would  never  have  been  obtained. 

Your  Memorialist  is  authorised  to  state  that 
Slater's  Counsel  agree  that  the  evidence  did  not 
justify  the  conviction. 

Your  Memorialist,  who  has  all  along  acted  as 
Slater's  Solicitor  since  he  was  brought  back  from 

102 


THE  CASE  OF  OSCAR  SLATER 

America  after  the  Extradition  Proceedings,  and 
who  has  had  very  many  interviews  with  Slater, 
begs  respectfully  to  state  his  absolute  belief  in 
Slater's  innocence. 

May  it  therefore  please  the  Right  Honour- 
able the  Secretary  of  State  for  Scotland 
to  take  this  Memorial  into  his  most  fa- 
vourable consideration,  and  thereafter 
to  advise  his  Most  Gracious  Majesty  to 
exercise  his  royal  prerogative  to  the  ef- 
fect of  commuting  the  sentence  passed 
upon  the  prisoner,  or  to  do  otherwise  as 
in  the  circumstances  may  seem  just. 
And  your  Memorialist  will  ever  pray. 

EWING  SPIERS, 
igo  West  George  Street,  Glasgow, 
Oscar  Slater's  Solicitor. 

Dated  this  seventeenth  day  of  May,  One 
thousand  nine  hundred  and  nine. 


103 


in 


MA 


m 


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